


This Love Left a Permanent Mark (This Love is Glowing in the Dark)

by aflowerchildsdreams



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Blow Jobs, Jealous Louis, M/M, Moresomes, OT5, Recreational Drug Use, Swearing, Underage - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 00:57:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3402566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aflowerchildsdreams/pseuds/aflowerchildsdreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Because I’m in love with you, too,” Harry explains, watching three chins fall open again and kind of wincing because, yeah, that’s not even the half of it.<br/>“You’re in...Wait. What?” Louis asks, finally dropping his anger in exchange for confusion.<br/>“I’m in love with you…..”<br/>“And Niall?”<br/>“And Niall.” Harry confirms, wishing that could just be the end of it already. “And Zayn. And. Uh. Liam?”<br/>Dead. Silence.<br/>Harry chews the inside of his cheek. Niall picks at the loose black rubber line on his Converse. Liam coughs. No one says a word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Love Left a Permanent Mark (This Love is Glowing in the Dark)

**Author's Note:**

> Whew. This has been a huge undertaking, but I'm here and I did it so, yay! 
> 
> I was so lucky and got such an amazing artist for my first big bang! All the love to Tina for her incredible drawing. You are a rock-star! 
> 
> Katie, thank you a ton for britpicking and just generally dealing with my madness through this and beyond. <3
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful panda for making me finish this and for everything else ever. I love you! 
> 
> Last, but not least, thank you to the ladies running this challenge, its been a blast!
> 
> I'm not affiliated with 1D in any way, this is fiction. 
> 
> Title from This Love by Taylor Swift

Sometimes, Zayn has the hardest time getting his bearings. He can’t seem to find and process the connection between Harry, sweet, goofy, baby faced, lanky, puppy _Harry_ and this thing, this boy, _man_ in front of him with the flushed face and sweaty hair and Zayn’s dick in his _mouth_ and holy Christ _this can’t be the same person_.

Zayn’s head is spinning at high speed, and vaguely, distantly, _as in maybe in the same light-year_ , he wonders if this is what it feels like to be a sock in a dryer, going round and round, and something a bit like hysteria bubbles up in his chest. He’s trying so hard not to laugh, even stuffs one fist in his mouth and bites down hard on the soft flesh of his knuckles, but it spills out anyway, tiny, helpless giggles that sound almost painful filling the empty space around him.

It’s the weed, and Zayn knows it. All of this, Harry’s flushed, perfect cheeks, the giggles, all of it only coming out when they’re too stoned to help themselves. When all they can do is touch and kiss and fuck because they’re both fucking gone, and it feels so good. Zayn admits to himself that okay, it’s because here in this moment they have an excuse, because in the morning it will all be okay again, _it’s just the weed_ , he’ll chant like a prayer, _he’s just my best friend, one of my four mesmerizing best friends_.

The honest to god truth is that they couldn’t say no if they wanted to, the five of them, they've always been so goddamn weak.

His hands are shaking, and he digs his nails deeper into the worn futon mattress and holds on tight, trying his best to breathe, _in through your nose, out through your mouth, Zayn, come on you know how to do this_.

Harry’s gaze is scorching when their eyes meet, and Zayn can’t hold on to it, he’s pretty sure that he’ll spontaneously combust if he tries. Focusing on Harry’s lips does no good either, they’re pretty and pink and wet with spit where they’re wrapped around Zayn’s cock, and _goddamn fuck shit_ he can’t _do_ this anymore. It’s too much, too much, too much, and he’s going to die, right here, like this, rutting up steadily into Harry’s mouth in the half-finished attic that’s seen 10 years of their lives pass within its walls.

“Fuck…fuck. Christ, Haz.” Maybe there are tears in his eyes at this point, frustrated, aching tears, and Zayn hates himself for it because he’s not a girl and this isn’t the time for any of this. Maybe he’s ashamed of how goddamn good he feels, but he can’t, won’t think about that right now.

Harry’s warm wet tongue swirls over the head of his dick and his teeth follow, gently grazing, not enough to hurt, but enough to make Zayn’s whole body shudder above him. Fisting Harry’s curls in one hand, Zayn squeezes his eyes shut so tight that he sees little lights popping off behind his eyelids, and bites his lip until he tastes blood. He has to keep his mouth shut, his words locked tight behind his gritted teeth because anything he has to say right now is _dangerousdangerousdangerous_ and _realrealreal_ and if he said them he’d have to run, run down the stairs and out of Harry’s house and into the street because it would all be so _fucked_. If he ruined this, he’d be forced to cut his tongue out and never, ever speak again.

Harry bobs down again, taking in as much of Zayn as he can, and Zayn almost begs for it. He just wants to come now, and Harry’s teasing, drawing it out as long as he can because Zayn knows he loves everything about the way it makes the older boy desperate, draws out these little whimpers that Zayn is powerless to control.

“Fuck Harry, come _on_.” Zayn can almost imagine Harry’s little smirk, the way that he’s so satisfied, so proud, that he’s made Zayn a fucking _wreck_. He entertains the thought of punching the younger boy for all of two and half seconds, then Harry starts _humming_ around him and he’s _done_ , hips snapping up violently as he comes.

When Zayn finally opens his eyes, Harry is sitting back on his haunches looking like an excited puppy. His eyes shine bright, alive and happy even when his pupils are blown and the green of his irises are almost black with want. He sticks his tongue out, showing Zayn his own come pooled in the dip of it. He shrugs almost nonchalantly as he swallows, making a show of it for Zayn, a show that he knows the older boy’s eyes can’t help but follow.

Zayn thinks that maybe he mumbled something about _a goddamn sinful little mouth_ before he’s up and has the distance closed between the two of them, lips firmly attached. He flips their positions and backs Harry roughly toward the futon.

“You think you can get away with it, don’t you? Just fucking act all indifferent after that and _get away_.”

Zayn’s licking into his mouth, the sharp taste of weed behind Harry’s teeth and across his tongue making his head spin again, more out of control than ever before. _This is in-fucking-sane, what are they even doing, how is this sixteen year old making everything so hot and hazy? What has Zayn gotten himself into?_ Questions crack in his head like lightning, firing neurons one after another until he’s fairly certain he’s going to pass out.

He grounds himself with the feel of Harry’s overheated body as he pushes him onto his back and pins his wrists over his head with one big hand. Harry’s cock is rock hard where it’s trapped between them, and Zayn goes breathless with it, smiling slightly at the effect that he’s having on the previously collected boy.

Straddling him, Zayn rolls his hips down and into Harry’s, the friction causing a small hiss to escape from between the swollen lips of the boy beneath him.

Zayn leans down and licks a long line up the column of Harry’s throat, teeth worrying the skin at his pulse point with slow deliberate movements. Harry’s making these delicious little broken sounds, almost like a mewling kitten, and Zayn growls. _It’s not fair, he’s unholy. He’s…_

“You’re sexy like that, Styles, you know that? So fucking hot.” He whispers low against the sweat slicked skin of Harry’s collarbone, but Zayn knows Harry hears him, that the younger boy loves being talked to like that. _He’s fucking filthy._

Zayn lets go of Harry’s wrists, leans back, and watches Harry go at it in earnest, hips rolling up to meet Zayn’s steadily as he fumbles with the button of his jeans, clearly desperate to get a hand around his dick. Zayn is momentarily dumbfounded. Harry’s cheeks are flushed such a delicate, pretty pink and Zayn has to close his eyes against the rush of _feeling_ that swells up in him, the intense way that words are gathering on his tongue, begging to be let out. Words like _wonderful_ , and _incredible_ , and a million other things that you just don’t _say_.

Harry whines, a long, pitiful sound, and it pulls Zayn back to reality with a rather quick snap. Crawling up Harry’s body, easily holding up his own weight, Zayn tugs Harry’s zip down and replaces Harry’s trembling hand with his own.

“Let me,” Zayn breathes, burying his nose in the crook of Harry’s neck as he gives his dick a few sharp tugs, twisting his wrist at the head to let his thumb graze the slit, spreading pre-come along the length of his cock. Harry’s breathing is erratic, he’s panting, swear words falling from his lips in a steady litany that goes right to Zayn’s own dick.

Zayn knows he’s so close, knows from the way Harry’s hips are rutting up to fuck faster into Zayn’s hand. He lets his mouth ghost just over the shell of the younger boy’s ear, just breathing hot and heavy against him.

“Let go Hazza, _come for me_.”

Zayn sinks his teeth hard into the skin just behind Harry’s ear and that’s it, he’s flying apart, coming hard into Zayn’s hand with a broken off cry.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Zayn,” Harry says, chest heaving as he fights to catch his breath. His voice, normally slow, is even slower now, words sticky on his tongue from the weed and the sleepiness that Zayn knows always washes over him after a particularly good orgasm.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a God, I know.” Zayn smirks, reaching out and tugging Harry upright with his clean hand. “But I am not going to sleep with your spunk covering me, so off with your shirt you nasty little shit.”

Harry laughs, shucking off his shirt and throwing it at Zayn’s head. Wiping off his hand with a slightly offended look, Zayn yawns.

“Should we go downstairs? Couch and…whatever?” It comes out tentatively, and it makes Harry grin. Ten years of friendship and Zayn still asks if he has to sleep on the couch. It’s endearing as shit in Harry’s opinion, one of Zayn’s little quirks that make him _Zayn_.

“No, we should not go downstairs you prat. Honestly, you act like this is the first time you’ve ever slept here.”

Zayn mumbles something that Harry thinks might have been, “Didn’t want. Dunno, shut up,” and prods at Harry’s hip.

“Get up. I like you, but I refuse to sleep on this futon unless it’s pulled out. You talk in your sleep and you kick.”

Harry gives a petulant little frown, and doesn’t budge.

“I don’t appreciate your cheek, mister.”

Zayn just rolls his eyes, bending down and unfolding the couch into a bed with Harry still on it, giggling helplessly even while he’s trying to look stern. Zayn throws one of the pillows they always keep up there at Harry, following it with another and a blanket.

“Gonna,” he points vaguely in the direction of the window, “Cig.”

Harry nods, punching his pillow into a comfortable position and wriggling down into the nest of blanket he’s made. He’s not offended. He knows that Zayn just needs some time alone, away from the noise and whatever else to clear his head. He’ll be back. He lets his eyes flutter closed and drifts off.

When Zayn crawls over him twenty minutes later, he’s barefoot and shivering in the lingering chill of spring nights in England. He tugs at least two thirds of the blanket off of Harry and huffs slightly into his pillow. Harry smiles, completely relaxing into the mattress. Zayn smells of comfort and home and there’s something soothing about knowing that he’s in arms reach.

In the darkness, Zayn rolls towards him and asks softly, in a voice that he kind of wonders if Harry can even hear, “Are you comfortable?”

“Mmm, sleep, Zaynie. Shhh,” Harry mumbles, throwing one ankle over Zayn’s and pressing his icy toes into Zayn‘s warmth..

Zayn lets his eyes fall shut and he thinks no more.  
\--------

The sun is shining hot the next morning, blazing through the window and onto Zayn so fiercely that he kind of thinks, yeah, this is how an iguana must feel like under a heat lamp. Sweating slightly, he kicks the blanket off of his lower half and into a ball at the foot of the bed, and pulls his shirt over his head as an afterthought.

Vaguely, he registers that the space beside him is empty, that Harry is off somewhere, but he’s way too sleepy to be concerned with his whereabouts. It is his house after all, it’s not like he’d gotten lost on the way to the bathroom and died of starvation or something equally ridiculous.

He’s asleep again when Harry pounces, knocking him harshly out of a dream about saving a pizza parlour from a horde of hungry aliens. Whatever that means.

“Get up, get up, get up,” Harry trills, bouncing on the bed with every word. Zayn wonders momentarily if killing him would be worth the effort, and decides, that no, it definitely would not, settled on empty threats instead.

“Harry, do you like life?”

“Mm, it’s tolerable, I suppose, even if you’re in it.” He wrinkles his nose and it’s so cute that Zayn has to fight to keep the mock anger from slipping right off his face.

“Than get the fuck off me or your life is going to be cut regrettably, tragically, short.”

Harry drops to his knees and drapes his long, slight body completely over Zayn’s, hooking his chin in the dip between his shoulder and his neck, and laughs. Zayn groans, tries to kick at him and growls when he’s unsuccessful. He’s on his side, and Harry has him pinned.

“You wouldn’t kill me.”

“I wouldn’t be so fucking sure if I were you, smart ass. Now get…oomph…off.”

Harry rolls off of him and onto his side, and, bitching quietly, Zayn stands up, pulling his still undone jeans up on his hips and casts around for his shirt. He’d thrown it in that direction, he was pretty sure. Harry gets to it first, smirking as he holds it out to him in the crook of one finger. Zayn snatches it back roughly, slipping it over his head and swearing loudly when he gets an ear caught in the collar.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty. Mum made breakfast, so…” He trails off, gesturing toward the door.

Zayn’s still glaring, but he relents grudgingly and runs a hand through his hair. Only the promise of Harry’s mum’s cooking could make getting up at this unholy hour worth any kind of effort.

“‘M gonna take a shower. Go ahead and eat. I’ll be down soon.”

Even though it’s early and he’s so tired that he wonders whether or not it’s possible for him to even make it down the stairs and into the kitchen, he can’t help but take the piss.

“Yeah, you need one, you smell worse than Liam, and we all know that’s a huge problem.”

“Piss off. It’s not exactly my fault you know, I do seem to recall you being involved in…yeah, well. Yeah.” He’s slightly awkward now, bouncing on the balls of his feet and staring at his socks with unnecessary concentration. Zayn crosses his arms, ignoring the slight flopping feeling in his stomach as best he can and clears his throat. That was too close for comfort, honestly. It’s in the rules of whatever the fuck this is that they’re doing that they don’t discuss it, don’t over think it, ever. Zayn at least can admit to himself that yeah, that would be one shit-storm that he’d love to avoid, owing mainly to the fact that if they ever did talk about it, he’d probably get hurt, and the fact that he has enough investment in…whatever…to get hurt isn’t exactly high on his list of things to deal with.

Looking back up at Harry, who’s got this tentative, almost skittish look in his eye, Zayn’s reminded of how impossibly _young_ he looks. Sixteen. Six-fucking-teen and hip deep in insanity. He knows, logically, that he’s only a year older than Harry, but sometimes, when he looks at Harry’s curls and soft, open eyes, Zayn forgets, thinks that he’s younger than he really is. Its then that he feels guilty, wondering if this fucked up relationship is going to hit Harry the hardest. He, Liam, Niall, and Louis, they’d get through it somehow, but what about Harry?

Not that he thinks he’d be able to handle a fall out between them with particularly good grace, no. He knows better to think that it’d be anything other than pure hell. It’s just that, if he hurt them, any of them, he couldn’t live with that. He’d much rather just run screaming in front of an oncoming train, thank you very much. So it goes, they can play this game, but Zayn is always going to be acutely aware of every move he makes, of every breath, and honestly, the only way he knows how to deal with the nagging bullshit in his head is to just not.

It’s nothing. It’s nothing. Just a game. _Keep your fucking head, you twat_.

He hitches a grin up on his face from somewhere deep down and turns Harry right round on his heel and frog marches him toward the attic door.

“Get out of here. I’m going downstairs. I’ll attempt to leave you a few crumbs.”

Harry rolls his eyes and gives a small snort, but doesn’t reply, just takes the stairs two at a time and, at the landing, turns right toward his bedroom. Zayn watches him disappear with a small sigh, and breathes just a tiny bit easier as he hears the door snick quietly closed.

\---------

He’s first met with Gemma’s appraising eyes when he shuffle-steps into the kitchen, ruffling his hair with one hand and scratching low on his belly with the other.

“Look who decided to join the land of the living. Tell me, do you ever sleep at your own house?” Her voice holds no malice, just playfulness, and Zayn sticks his tongue out at her in response.

Harry’s older sister is beautiful, there’s no other word for it. The last time he’d seen her, her hair had been a soft brown, a shade or two lighter than her brother’s, and as close, Zayn assumes, to her natural colour than it’s been in a long time.

Today, it’s a light, almost white lavender. Zayn thinks that it could be darker and brighter when she’s out of the direct sunlight filtering through the window behind her, but he isn’t sure, and honestly, if he cared enough about hair color to know the answer to that question, he’d probably be just a little bit further gone down the path of absolute craziness than he thought.

Gemma’s eyelashes are long and alluring, and Zayn finds himself staring for half a second as she blinks, tracing the movement of her lashes as they kiss her cheeks again and again and again.

“Um, mum. Pretty sure Zayn’s brain has fallen out in the night. Do you want to look for it or should I?”

“Fuck _off_ , Gem. ‘S too early for your shit.” Zayn retorts, clapping his hand hastily over his mouth as his thoughts catch up with his lips and he realizes what he’d said. Anne doesn’t say anything though, just half smiles at him from where she leans against the counter in the corner, nursing a cup of tea.

“Well then.” Gemma grins, dimples sitting themselves deeper into her cheeks as she follows Zayn’s movement further into the kitchen with her brown eyes.

Handing him a plate from the cupboard by her head, Anne fixes him with an inquisitive look that makes Zayn feel a slight bit sheepish. He doesn’t quite know what to do with parents, and he gives her an exaggerated look of innocence.

“Zayn Malik, have you been corrupting my son again? He’s seen more of the four of you than us lately so you’ll understand if I’m concerned, never knowing what he‘s been up to. Mum’s job and all that tosh.”

She smiles in earnest then, and Zayn knows that she’s just joking. She’s like a second mum to him anyway. Well. One of his second mums, he supposes, Liam’s and Louis’s claim him too. And Niall’s probably would as well, if she saw more of them. He’s well aware that Anne thinks of him as a son, having known him since he was in primary school and watching him grow right along with the rest of her children.

“I’d never,” Zayn says, mock indignation coloring his voice. Dropping a kiss swiftly upon her soft cheek, he heads to the pan by the cooker and stakes claim on a couple of pancakes and some eggs. Wrinkling his nose when the sugary lemon topping on his pancake starts oozing toward his fried egg, Zayn stops the flow and corrals it back to its side of the plate just in the nick of time.

“Ugh, look at you. You’re pickier than a two year old, Malik. Look at the big scary lemon trying to touch my eggs. Let me have a crisis. You’re pathetic,” Gemma shoots at him as he pulls out the chair next to her in the little breakfast nook and sits down.

Zayn’s mouth is open, a sarcastic retort growing splendidly on his tongue, when Harry comes down the stairs, bounding down hard on the final step.

“Oi, shut up, the both of you,” Harry says, shaking his wet hair out over Gemma’s shoulders and jumping back quickly as she squeals and swats wildly in his general direction.

“My children. Such perfect angels,” Anne calls, rolling her eyes and sighing in exasperation. “They were such well behaved kids. I don’t know what happened.”

“Morning Mummy,” Harry laughs, all but skipping over to her and folding her in his long arms. “I love youuu.”

She may have been about to say something, but Zayn beat her to it.

“Harold…” Zayn growls, annoyance blossoming in every word. “Do you mind telling me how long you’ve had that shirt?”

“What, this one? Why?” Harry asks, plucking at the faded black Batman shirt with the worn sleeves and ragged collar.

“ _Because_ ,” Zayn says. “Our _dear_ Liam has been accusing me of stealing it for weeks!”

Harry shrugs, nicked shirt riding up to show a bit of pale skin between the hem and the waistband of his joggers.

“Definitely not my fault he’s got the wrong man. Sounds like a personal problem to me, actually. And my name isn’t even Harold you tit!”

\------

“What time is it?” Harry asks, pushing the front door closed behind Zayn.

“Half 8, I think. Mum’s going for groceries, she wants to know if you need her to get anything.”

“Nah, I have work at eleven anyway.”

“So where’s Zayn off to, I thought he was stapled to your side or something.” She’s standing on one foot, leaning casually in the door frame to the living room watching him with a half lazy smile. Harry loves her, he really does, she’s an incredible sister, but he hates when she starts looking at him that way. It’s a mixture of their mum’s patented “I-know-your-secrets” face and the mysterious, almost rough edged, air of their father, and Harry thinks that maybe it’s just a little bit terrifying. Or a lot terrifying, if he’s being perfectly honest.

“Um. He had to meet Perrie, I think. I’m not sure. Why?”

She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, just continues to stare him up and down with that same penetrating gaze. Harry has to literally grit his teeth and clench his fists into tight little balls to keep from squirming like a little kid who’s had one too many sweets before dinner.

“Perrie, yeah? They’re still together then?”

Harry sighs. Good, a question with a straightforward answer. Bless her.

“Yep.” He pops the ‘p’ at the end, listening to the sounds of his mum doing the washing up in the room down the hall. He still can’t quite meet her eyes though, and he’s not entirely sure why.

“That’s what, a year? Two?” She asks, and softness begins creeping slowly into her voice. She’d been trying to get a feel for something, Harry is sure of it.

“Two, yeah. ‘S been a while.”

“Sweet. I wasn’t sure Zayn was the committing type.”

“He…ah. Well, he really loves her, and…stuff. I guess.” Why the hell was this so awkward? What in the world did Harry have to hide? They weren’t even talking about him and yet here he stands, feeling like he’s maybe going to die if he doesn’t get some fresh air. Like. Now.

“Mmhmm. So,” she asks, shifting her weight to the other hip and wincing a bit when her knee pops in protest. “Which of your little playmates is coming for tea tonight?” Her neon bangles slide down her wrist, caught and held on only by her thumb bone, and Harry watches their movement with a split seconds curiosity, wonders absently if he could even get those tiny rings over his own big hands.

“All of them, actually. Well. If Louis’s mum gets home in time to take the twins.”

“Honestly, is this house ever not full of teenage boys? I mean, most people would say that I have it good, but when all five of them are practically your brothers…” She trails off, pursing her lips shut tight and heading back down the long hallway toward the stairs.

Harry just shakes his head, almost as if ridding it of a long accumulation of dust, hard at first and then slower, again and again until he’s dizzy.

It does nothing to quell the violent feeling of unease settling low in his belly.

\---------

He usually has his shit together. He’s kind of known for having his shit together, so the fact that he totally has nothing what-so-ever together right now really fucking bothers him.

Harry knows that she didn’t mean to, but Gemma’s words put him into a tail-spin. Come to think about it, actually, she has a knack for that. When he was four, she’d told him that his eyes were melting when he cried, and that, if he kept crying his eyes would shrivel into nothing and he’d be blind and creepy.

When he was fifteen and she found out he’d had sex, she had him absolutely convinced that yeah, the girl must be pregnant and that quite possibly his dick was going to fall off. He hasn’t quite forgiven her for that one, to be honest.

Now this.

This is more than he can handle right now, maybe ever, and he‘s pretty sure that if his thoughts don’t slow down, his head is going to explode. For the first time in his life, Harry actually thinks the whole _I’m only sixteen, why the fuck do I have to deal with this_ cliché and yeah, he hates himself for it because really who the fuck even cares if he’s sixteen? It’s his life and he has to deal with this and this is… _bullshit._

 _Who the fuck thought that putting their best friend’s dick in their mouth was a good idea, especially when said best friend is straight and has a_ girlfriend. _Apparently I did. Great. Yes. Best idea fucking ever._

It’s not even like that last night had been the first time either. If it had, maybe it would be acceptable to overlook it, but. It hadn’t. _It hadn’t_. They’d done it again, and again, and again, and Harry knew that Zayn didn’t think much about it. He was sure that the older boy just chalked it up to being stoned and went on about his business, but that wasn’t Harry.

He couldn’t just chalk it up to the drugs. So maybe he was always high when they fooled around, but _god_ he’d wanted it. Every. Single. Time. He’d wanted it so bad and that’s what’s killing him. It’s not even about the fact that Zayn’s a boy either. It’s not exactly how he thought things were going to go, but being gay or bisexual or whatever isn’t the worst thing in the world. No, the worst thing is knowing that right now, Zayn was probably with Perrie, holding her in his arms, laughing with her, kissing _her_ with the same mouth that’d kissed _him. He probably hasn’t even brushed his teeth,_ Harry thinks, and yeah, that, well that is quite frankly not an okay thought.

It’s not jealousy either. Okay, maybe a little, but jealousy definitely has nothing to do with the fact that he could throw up right here in the street on the way to work. It’s _guilt_ that’s eating him inside, and he knows it. Perrie is… he loves Perrie. She’s beautiful, and quirky, and talented, and she makes Zayn _smile_ and Harry just feels fucking dirty. So, so fucking dirty.

Zayn is cheating and Harry isn’t stopping it. He’d probably throw himself off a bridge right now, if there was one in sight, but there’s just him and this shitty downtown street, rubbish in the streets and the worn out soles of his favourite purple converse slip-slapping on the sidewalk to keep him company.

Goddamn, he hates himself.

Honestly, all of this, it’s just _shit_ , and if Harry let himself think of later tonight, of the other boys, he’s pretty sure that he’d fall apart.

He’d have to just keep moving. He’ll just keep going, and if there’s nothing left of him in the end, well, it’d be no less than he deserves.

\------

“Dunno, not me…no… it wasn’t me….. _I don’t know, Liam_ ….Look you can ask me that 40 more times today but I still didn’t take your damn shirt…..why don’t you ask him?….No, I am not going through Zayn’s closet for you. Why do you even _care_ so much about this ratty ass shirt mate?….oh. Yep. Yes. Shouldn’t have asked. Of _course it is_. Yep. Mmm. Hanging up the phone now…”

Niall has no fucking clue who has Liam’s goddamn shirt but when he finds out he’s going to _kill them_ , brutally, mercilessly, kill them, and he’s not going to have a bit of remorse about it. Honestly, you’d think that someone had stolen a precious family heirloom with the way Liam’s been going on. Two weeks of constant calls and leading questions and Niall is at his wits end.

He kind of hopes that the sorry bastard who stole it chokes on their evening tea.

He ruffles his hair and pockets his phone with a small snort and what maybe possibly could have been a smile, not that he’d ever admit it. It’s half four, he’s got ten minutes to get to the bakery and meet Harry at the end of his shift. If you asked him, he’d say he mostly just goes for the food. Harry always brings him something; whether it’s a bit of crushed pie or one of his famed cupcakes, he’s always greeted with something warm and delicious.

If he’s being _honest_ though, Niall meets the younger boy every weekend after work because it’s _Harry_. Lanky, loud, goofy, _incredible_ Harry. Harry is all bright eyes and unfaltering kindness, all the things that Niall wishes he could say about himself. Niall loves Harry for his familiarity, for the way that their relationship kind of feels good in that best worn out pair of jeans sort of way.

Comfort and a feeling of just being _settled_ isn’t something that he’d had a lot as a kid. His life was happy enough, sure, but something always kept him just a little left of centre, tilted, suspended in a way that was close, but just not quite right. He supposed that it comes as part of the territory, when your parents split up. He’d moved a lot, him and his older brother. Sometimes when he looks back on it, all that Niall can really see is a blur of colours, smears of mumdadmumdadmumdad all across the walls of his mind.

Finally landing in one place, even if it wasn’t in his hometown in Ireland was a blessing. Finding his best friends, well that was a miracle, Niall thought. He loves them. He honest to god fucking _loves_ them, and though Niall isn’t really all that much for being a sap it’s the god’s honest truth. A life without Liam, Zayn, Louis, and Harry is unimaginable.

As he steps up on the stoop of the little bakery, a light rain is beginning to fall. The windows of the shop are already clouding, the heat inside pushing outward against the sudden change in the atmosphere. Niall catches the eye of one of the old ladies shuffling around behind the counter, and laughs at how she grins and prods Harry, who had been stacking croissants in their case, in the ribs.

He looks up just as Niall walks in the door, and in his attempt to wave, almost drops the tray he was holding.

“Shit. Sorry Mary.” He apologizes, righting the tray with more dexterity than Niall thought he had. “Shit, I mean….Shi---shoot? Shoot. Definitely shoot.”

Mary just eyes him with her usual grandmotherly smile, and pretends to slap him on the bum with the roll of wax paper she’d been holding.

“It’s fine, lad. I’ve heard a lot worse swearing in my time. In fact, I’ve said a lot worse. Pretty regularly in fact. Still do. Those damned ovens. Now get on out of here, and take that one a brunch pasty. We have a few left over and god knows he’ll eat them.”

“HEY!” Niall protests in mock anger, his Irish accent lifting up and over the words almost musically. “Ugh, Mary. Right in the chest. I thought you loved me. Gutted.” He flashes her the cutest little pout he can muster, slipping down below the counter dramatically and flailing on the floor, as if she’d actually stabbed him with her words.

“Oh come off it, Niall Horan. You know I don’t play favourites, but if I did, you’d be on the list. Now get out of here, the both of you.”

She swishes them out with a last playful swat, and Niall grumbles half heartedly in return.

Outside, the rain is really coming down now, dense sheets of it that neither boy can see through. Stopping once again on the covered steps, Harry and Niall pull their jacket hoods up and over their hair, staring at one another in an “oh, this is going to be fucking fun” sort of way.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got an umbrella in your pocket, do you?”

“Do I _look_ like I have an umbrella to you, Harry? Where the fuck would I even put it? Bleedin’ Christ.”

“No need to get your knickers in a twist there, Nialler. It was just wishful thinking,” Harry offers, his smile so bright that Niall is momentarily caught up by it. Sometimes, looking at Harry is like looking straight into the sun, and Niall has to remind himself that you can’t look directly at its light for too long without going blind. He lets his gaze slip away, towards the pelting rain and sighs.

“Shall we?” Harry asks, and before Niall can disagree, he’s already out into the street, taking long strides toward home.

Niall follows, because it’s not really like he has much choice. Growling and ducking from out under the protective eaves, he steps out into the rain and grimaces as the first big drops splash down over his shoulders.

They’re going to get wet. Really, really wet. And there’s no hell quite like wet, heavy, jeans on a boy who couldn’t be bothered to wear pants.

\--------

The dry heat that floods over them as soon as they open the door to Harry’s house is like a mother’s kiss on a bruised knee to Niall. They’re stood on the welcome mat, dripping wet and shivering, but they can’t stop laughing either and it’s honestly just a little bit ridiculous.

Harry looks exactly like a shaggy wet dog, and absently, Niall thinks how hilarious it would be if he just started shaking all over, wetting the floors and the ceiling and the wall with rain from his sodden hair.

“Let’s...Let’s go up-upstairs. Clean clo-clothes,” Harry stammers, and Niall has no idea if it’s from the raucous laughter ringing through the room or the fact that Harry is wet to the bone and freezing. Either way, clean, dry, clothes sound almost better than all the rest of the world’s treasures combined and Niall doesn’t even think of protesting, just takes the stairs three at a time, desperate to be a long, long way away from these jeans.

Harry has already toed off his shoes and socks when Niall reaches his bedroom door, his head half hidden behind a huge mound of clean laundry on his bed.

“Do you even sleep in here, mate? Jesus, when is the last time you put away your laundry?”

Harry has grace enough to blush, but his shrug is small and maybe just a tiny bit sad. Niall can’t help but pick up on the way Harry won’t quite meet his eyes.

“Mum put it in here this morning. I was upstairs last night. Zayn was here.”

That’s all he has to say, honestly. Niall knows almost instantly what’s causing his best friend to deflate, almost fold into himself in front of him. He’s too fucking young for this. Too _good_ for this. There is only one thing that could’ve happened last night and Niall is no stranger to Harry after those nights with Zayn. He knows that guilt must be eating at him, and as shitty as he feels for thinking it, Niall is just a little bit _jealous_ of Zayn. It’s not exactly like he and Harry hadn’t ever fooled around as well, they all had, but Zayn, he’s so easygoing, so nonchalant. He doesn’t carry the guilt or the feelings that Harry and Niall do, just floats seamlessly between this world and the one he has with Perrie like its nothing, and sometimes, yeah, it pisses Niall off. A lot. It’s not _fair_.

“I…are you okay, Haz? I mean…” he all but whispers, half hoping that that if Harry does hear him, he won’t respond.

“No,” and he says it so fucking honestly that it all but breaks Niall right fucking down to the ground, shatters his heart as if it were made of the most fragile spun sugar. Harry doesn’t miss a beat though, just keeps digging through the laundry before him with a determined look in his eye. Like he didn’t just say something important.

Niall takes a few steps further into the room, edging past the bed with the same worn Spiderman comforter that Harry’s had since he was twelve, and stops directly on the other side of the basket Harry is currently digging through.

“Harry, look at me.”

Harry doesn’t offer to look up, just pulls out a dark purple tee-shirt with dinosaurs on it, and a pair of dark blue plaid pyjama bottoms, and thrusts them in Niall’s direction.

“Harry…fuck.”

Standing up, still resolutely not meeting Niall’s eye, Harry turns his back and shucks his trousers and his pants, pulling on the same joggers he’d worn at breakfast so fast that Niall only gets a split second’s glance at the younger boy’s bare ass. His jacket comes next, falling to the floor with a rather loud squelching noise, a crumpled heap in the corner that steadily dampens Anne’s rug with rain water. Harry’s wearing a white v-neck and a purple beanie over his wet hair before he finally turns around.

Niall’s heart gives another violent lurch. For a second, he has to close his eyes and breathe deep because he really, really thinks that he might hurl. Harry’s eyes are red-rimmed and glassy, something in his cheek is twitching, and Niall knows that he’s doing all he can to stop tears from falling. He’s been here too many times before.

“Hey, come here…” Niall tries again, stepping closer to Harry carefully, lightly, like a man approaching a wild animal, a flight risk. Harry hesitates a second, wavering between letting Niall in and keeping him out before finally taking the final step, closing the distance between them, and burrowing his face in Niall’s chest.

The Irish boy doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to make it better and it fucking hurts inside. All he can do is hold on. He wraps his arms as tightly as he can around Harry’s slight frame, and lets his nose fall to rest against the younger boy’s forehead. Harry is shaking from head to toe, his breath uneven and forced, but he’s not crying, and for that, Niall could thank god and promise his soul in turn to every deity ever known because yeah, he couldn’t handle it if there were tears.

It takes a while, but slowly Harry relaxes, finding his breath again, and Niall feels something in his chest physically loosen. He makes a mental note that maybe, that’s what a guitar string feels like when it’s been tightened almost past the point of endurance and then someone comes by and tunes the instrument with loving hands. Just one last sharp tug and then finally, suddenly, _peace, music reborn._

“You’ve got me all wet again, you loser!” Harry laughs, and at first it’s shaky, but it builds again fairly steadily, and it’s welcome enough that it earns a smirk from Niall as he starts changing at last.

Niall tugs his dinosaur tee down over his stomach and then stops dead, eyes landing on the pile of Harry’s forgotten wet clothes.

“Is that Liam’s fucking shirt?”  
\--------

Standing on someone’s front stoop looking like an idiot is not Louis’ idea of a good time, and yet, as per usual, Harry was making his life difficult. How many fucking times did a guy have to knock on a damn door for someone to answer it? Jesus Christ. At least the rain had stopped.

“Open. This. Door. You. Absolute. Tit!” he screams, punctuating each word with a pound of his fist on the dark wood before him and a smirk. Every time his fist makes contact, the little panes of glass rattle, and Louis half wonders if it would be worth risking Anne’s wrath to see one or two of them shattered in Harry’s entryway.

Probably not.

Shuffling his feet and swearing loudly, Louis looks around, eyes flitting here and there, never really landing on anything particular until, oh. Well. Shit. There’s a neighbour looking at him. Like, the guy literally has his neck craned over the garden wall staring like an axe murder or something. Louis was never good with people staring; he always kind of took it to heart, assuming, usually wrongly, that someone was giving him the eye over his distinct lack of, well, height. It’d become his first instinct to mouth off at anyone he catches staring at him sometime around the time of playschool, a defence he’d learned to hone instead of crying over the other’s teasing words.

“Uh,” he starts, turning toward the nosy neighbour and raising one strong brow, “can I fucking help you?”

Nosy Mr. Next Door just huffs, shaking his grizzled gray head in a completely unapproving way. “When I was your age, we didn’t go round the neighbourhood shouting rubbish at someone’s front door. We assumed that if no one answered we weren’t welcome.”

“You know, it’s funny that you say that, sir,” Louis says, pushing his words from behind gritted teeth and turning back to face Harry’s door. “Because you seem to have lost the ability to ascertain your welcome.” He then resumes his banging and calls, “HAROLD, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR BEFORE AN ANGRY PENSIONER EATS ME. IF I DIE OUT HERE I SWEAR I’LL HAUNT YOU FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.”

It seemed that fear tactics weren’t going to work either. _Fuck_. He’s mid way through the action of kicking the door swiftly when it’s jerked opened by Gemma, and he has to do this weird one foot hop, hokey pokey- type thing to keep from taking her out at the shins.

“What in the holy name of Christ are you _doing_?” she snarls, jerking him in by the collar of his jacket and slamming the door behind him with a last panicked look at Mr. Next Door.

“Gemma, darling! How lovely to see you!” he starts, grasping at straws for something to say that could possibly stand up to her scowl. Honestly, she can be terrifying.

“ _Don’t_ you ‘Gemma, darling’ me, you insufferable little twat. You do know that raging on at someone’s door and terrorizing the neighbours is generally perceived at delinquent behaviour don’t you? Fuck’s sake.”

“Sorry?” he offers, his shoulders drawn up to his chin and trying to look as innocent and cute as possible.  
She’s still staring. Why is she still staring? _Uncross your arms woman!_ Okay, yeah, Louis was definitely getting nervous. It’s just as he’s honestly starting to list possible escape routes in his head that her expression softens, her breath leaving her in disgruntled but relenting huff.

“Fine, fine. Just. Ugh, why are you so _stupid_?”

He lets a smile creep over his features, because really, it’s Gemma and she’s been yelling at him since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Or something.

“How long are you here?” Louis asks, taking his jacket off and tossing it somewhere in the direction of the coat rack.

“Mmm. A few more days, then summer term starts.” She sighs. “You always forget how much you love being home, and then you have to go back, and, I dunno. That’s life, though isn‘t it?”

“I s’pose so,” Louis responds, trying valiantly to make his voice sound like anything but a pathetic whimper. He does know. Next fall he’ll be off at uni as well. He’ll have to leave all of this behind, and the thought makes his stomach twist in knots. He lets his eyes close for just a second, and as if waiting to be played, the faces of Liam, Zayn, Niall, and Harry fly through his thoughts, flickering like the last few frames on an old film reel. He chokes back a sob, and kisses Gemma softly on the cheek.

“’S good to see you though, Gem, really.”

“Oi, you bastard! Get your lips off my sister!” Harry yells, curls bouncing wildly about as he bounds down the stairs, followed closely by Niall.

“Hey, hey, I’m innocent,” he says, throwing his hands in the air and retreating a few steps away from Gemma, who greets them with a spectacular roll of her chocolate eyes and pads barefoot past Louis toward the living room.

“You are the least innocent person I know, mate.” Niall chuckles, giving him a smile and a dig in the ribs.

“At least I’m not a drunken leprechaun,” he retorts, shooting daggers in Harry’s direction. “And you, why the fuck didn’t you answer the fucking door, Jesus Christ, I thought I’d be out there until morning.”

“How long have you been coming here? You could have just walked in. And anyway, you didn’t die in the big scary outdoors did you? You were all alone and everything,” Harry says, snorting softly and wrapping a big hand around the back of Louis’ neck and dragging him into a hug.

“Don’t touch me, Curls, you’re on probation.” And its like, even though he kind of wants to be angry, or at least _pretend_ to be angry, he can’t ever hold onto it. Harry pulls him in like that and Louis can’t resist. If puppies could be personified, they’d be Harry, warm and cuddly, and always able to get out of trouble. Well. Mostly. If Harry were to piss on his shoes, then yeah, Louis would probably kill him, puppy or not.

“Where’s Zayn and Liam?” Louis asks, casting around for any sign of the other two boys. He’s usually _like, always_ later than Liam, and he’d probably be later than Zayn as well, except the only way to be later than Zayn is to be dead.

“They’re coming. Zayn is meeting Liam at the bus stop, but he just texted me saying that the bus was late.”

“Oh, the usual then?”

“Yep.”

“So,” Louis asks, following the other two into the kitchen for a coke, “has Liam been calling you guys about his shirt too?”

All he gets in return is a sharp blow against the back of the head from Niall. Well then.

\--------

“Why is it,” Louis asks, sprawled out on the carpet in the attic upstairs, “that we always end up right here?”

“Here as in…here, or here as in _here_ , you know, Earth?” Liam asks, chewing on the third nail of his left hand absently.

“Don’t be a twat, Liam. You fucking know what I mean,” Louis growls, rolling his eyes hard enough that Harry begins to wonder if he’s going to cause permanent damage. That’d be a real pity, he thinks. Louis has beautiful eyes. _Er. What? No. No he does not, thank you very much._

“Well it doesn’t really take a genius does it?” Niall starts, glaring at Louis as he mumbles something that sounds kind of like _not if you know about it_. Honestly. “Zayn here,” he continues, bumping Zayn’s knee with his bare toes, “always brings the spliff, which, obviously, none of you Neanderthals can resist. I, on the other hand, quite enjoy the company. Especially when Liam decides to treat us to a table dance.”

Liam’s face goes instantly scarlet.

“It was _one time_ , you assholes, and if Zaynie dearest over there didn’t put something else in those fucking brownies I’ll eat him.”

“Oh, really now? You will, will you?” Zayn asks, dark eyebrow darting up to meet his hairline swiftly, eyes shining with something that Harry assumed to be mischief. Liam’s in for it now, and judging by the way his cheeks flush a deeper red, he just realized it. “Maybe I should spike your food more often, Payne, if it will make you keep talking such kinky shit.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Liam counters, pulling up his knees and burying his face in them. “I didn’t…ugh, fuck you all.” Harry had to bend a bit closer to hear that last bit, as it only came out in sort of a jumbled up whisper. Typically, the older boy could keep his cool, but there’s something about Zayn that just gets right under his skin and turns him into a blubbering mess. Harry knows how Liam feels. Zayn has some sort of voodoo, he’s pretty sure.

“HEY!” Louis protests, rolling up into a sitting position with one fluid motion. “I had nothing to do with any of that annd….” he swats at Niall, who’s trying valiantly to cut across Louis and argue his own point “…and, I don’t appreciate being talked to like that, Liam.”

As soon as the last words leave Louis’ lips, Niall starts in, not missing a beat.

“ _You were taping him, you cunt!_ ”

“Uh, yeah,” Harry agrees, trying to hold in a smile at the look of absolute betrayal on Louis’s delicate face. “You said that you were going to put it on YouTube and watch it go viral, if I do remember correctly. Which, I do.”

“That stings, Harold. Stings,” Louis whines, grasping at the air between them with a pained expression. “How could you? You said you’d always love me best, and then you sell me out.”

“No, no. See, you misunderstood,” Liam says, finally burrowing out of the cave he’d made with his arms. His cheeks are still a little flushed, pretty and pink, but he’s at least lost his resemblance to a cherry tomato.  
“He said he’d always love _us_ best. _Us_ , Lou. As in, you know. The collective.”

“Hmmmpfh. I hate all of you, then. How’s that?” Louis asks, voice full of the same defiance Harry’s heard a million times over from one of Louis’ little sisters.

“Aww, look at him, Li. You’ve crushed him. He’s _fragile_ ,” Harry says, a giant grin forming around his words. “Come here, pet.” He gestures toward Louis, who crawls over and into Harry’s lap without protest, and, in true Louis fashion, sticks his tongue out at Liam.

“Shut up, you tits. Are we going to sit up here for hours gossiping like little girls or are we going to put this spliff to good use?” Zayn asks, eying them all critically as he packs a bowl.

“I, for one, think Mr. Malik has a brilliant point,” Louis says, hopping swiftly off of Harry’s lap and over to Zayn’s side. “Got a light?”

“Louis, how long have you known Zayn? If he didn’t have a light Hell would have frozen over and pigs would be flying out of your arse,” Niall gripes. Harry elbows him lightly in the ribs, which only earns a _what, it’s true_ sort of look from the blonde.

Harry isn’t quite sure how this always starts, but from the second that Zayn flicks his lighter and takes that first hit, things start to slow down, the whole attic shrinks in on them, and he swears, if he looks close enough, he’ll see sparks being thrown not just from the source of the flame, but from behind each other’s eyes.

They’re in way too fucking deep.

It’s not instant though, and that part is what amuses Harry the most. Just like a real fire, he can watch it build. Liam is always the first one to go pliant, dropping out of the circle all together to lie on his back on the carpet and just _chill_. Louis is the exact opposite. He’s full of life when he’s stoned. He’s small, but he’s so full of this manic energy that, most of the time, he’ll start off playing FIFA calmly on the couch, and, twenty minutes later, you’ll find him swearing in front of the TV, moving avidly as if maybe his on-screen players will only work if he moves _for_ them. Thumbs be damned.

Harry taps out next. He knows that he can only take so much before it all becomes way too overwhelming. There are all these feelings, and that guilt, and why is it so hot in here? He feels kind of like he’s in a sauna sometimes, like he’s choking to death on the heat haze that surrounds him, and there’s nowhere to go, no fresh air to be had. It’s then and only then that Harry starts to think about things like panic attacks and paranoia, and he has to focus every last bit of his energy on keeping himself grounded, because if he loses focus for just one second, he’ll fly away and never come back.

Niall is spread eagle on the couch, watching the ceiling fan cast shadows over Liam’s face with lazy eyes. Zayn is taking one last hit, the smoke unfurling from within his lungs making the most beautiful patterns in the air before him. He coughs low and dry, pocketing his lighter and his pipe, and god damn it all, Harry can’t _breathe_.

Pulling himself up slowly, he crosses the room, and, with a determined look in his eye, fits his lips over Niall’s.

“Hey…” Niall starts, pulling away for a second and holding Harry at bay as he chases him, clearly trying hard to kiss him again. Maybe even swallow him whole, Harry isn’t quite sure yet exactly what he wants.

“Shh,” Harry complains, hands fisting into Niall’s shirt and dragging him closer. “Kiss me, yeah? Just want to…”

Niall takes one look at Harry’s blown wide eyes, and feels his heart race beneath his shirt, and, really, what the fuck else was he supposed to do?

It’s desperate at first, Harry puts all of his focus into it, into kissing and touching and breathing and just, just _everything_. Gradually, and then all at once, he crashes back to himself, relents a little of the pressure, and kisses Niall with slow, deliberate movements, kisses him to feel it, rather than just to anchor himself with something solid. From the farthest corner of the room, and in the back of his brain, Zayn’s voice rings quietly, a whisper of wind when the whole world has fallen silent.

“ _Jesus_ Christ. Are you seeing this, Lou? I told you he‘s a filthy little shit.”

Harry can feel it even from across the room, the heat radiating off Zayn’s caramel skin in waves. He knows just how bad Zayn wants, needs to be touched right now. Leaning away from Niall for just a second, he throws a knowing look in Liam’s direction, and jerks his head at Zayn.

“Liam, I think he could use a _hand_.”

Niall literally snorts at the little squeak that Liam gives, and Harry smiles, relishing in the comfort that always rushes over him when Niall laughs. It’s kind of like home and the excitement of doing something new all rolled up into one strange but not unwelcome emotion.

Liam is still hesitating, and if he didn’t have his tongue in Niall’s mouth, Harry is pretty sure he’d be laughing.

“Fuck’s sake, Liam. You act like you’ve never seen a penis before, and though you’re kind of cute when you’re being shy and shit, I’m going to need you to focus. Preferably over here. On my dick,” Zayn chokes out and Harry literally can’t _not_ laugh, because Zayn’s so needy for it, and Liam looks like he might just pass out, and _fuck_ he’s high.

So, so, high.

“You’re so fucking stoned, Styles.” Niall says, his Irish accent thick and heavy on his tongue.

“Yes, yes I am,” Harry agrees, his forehead resting on Niall’s and his eyes closed. The room is literally spinning and, um, hello that’s never happened before, and for one reckless second, Harry lets himself wonder if he’s lightheaded from the drugs or from breathing the same air as Niall, feeling his warm breath ghost over his skin in little puffs. He’s not sure when he decided that was okay thought, but there it is, and right now he doesn’t really want to spend time dwelling on it.

For just a second, their eyes meet, and there’s a pang in Harry’s chest that’s much more like a deep ache, it’s almost like longing, and, letting his lips just graze Niall’s, Harry thinks maybe he should just go with it.

And that’s when fucking Louis decides to be a royal pain in his ass.

“Hey! Um. Feeling a little left out over here. My dick has feelings too you know.”

Casting an eye toward the corner, Harry smirks. Liam has Zayn on his back, his mouth stretched around his cock, and well, shit. He’d said to to give him a _hand_ , but okay, that works too.

“Go…I dunno. Fuck yourself, Lou. I’m kind of busy.”

Louis huffs, but as Harry goes back to sucking a crimson mark just below Niall’s collarbone, he’s pretty sure he hears the ruffling of fabric and the little relieved sigh of someone who’d just got a hand around their dick.

\-----------

God _damn_ he’s tired. Like, bone tired. He hadn’t realized it until just now, though he supposes it makes sense. He hadn’t slept at all well last night, just tossed and turned all night, fighting with his own mixed-up feelings and wondering how in the hell Zayn could sleep soundly through all of his moving. Then he had work and honestly, he just needs to sleep. As in, sleep of the dead sleep. Maybe for days.

Liam is watching him with this sleepy-fucked out smile, his hand idly tracing over Zayn’s exposed tummy. Harry half wonders how he does it. How could he just forget about Perrie? Maybe it’s not even that. Maybe Liam hasn’t forgotten, not really, he just puts it out of his mind for as long as possible, because much as Liam tries, he can’t hide it. He’s so in love with Zayn, and his moments with him, like this, are few and far between, precious.

Harry knows. He knows it all too fucking well. Having Zayn’s attention is like nothing else in the world. He has this way of making you feel like you’re the only person in the entire world who’s ever meant anything to him. He’s beautiful and he’s charming, and Harry totally understands how Liam can be in love, he does. He really does.

But _Perrie_.

Harry shakes his head violently for the second time today, and thinks that maybe he’s finally over done it, that maybe, just maybe, he’s going to puke. Spectacularly. All over Niall.

 _Niall_.

Harry can’t. He just fucking can’t, okay. Not tonight. He’s too tired to even begin to think about that basket of feelings. It’s too much.

“Sleepy. Need bed. Now.”

“Mmmmmm, am sleeping. Shut up,” Zayn replies, opening one eye, but not bothering to lift his head off the carpet. Harry is sure that he pulls Liam in a little closer, nosing into his hair, and he doesn’t miss how Liam blushes, biting his lip just a little bit in an effort to not smile like the dork he is.

“Lou. C’mere,” Liam offers quickly, stretching his hand lazily toward the older boy. “Cuddles.”

Louis pretends to grumble, Louis always pretends to grumble, but he doesn’t hesitate a bit. Grabbing a pillow from Harry’s side and tossing it in the general direction of Liam and Zayn, he follows, punching Liam lightly in the stomach before nestling down there, legs splayed outward ridiculously. Harry smiles at them. They look like a sleepy, sloppy ‘T’ and he thinks that he loves them so much that he might die. Like legitimately, actually, stop fucking breathing.

“You coming?” Zayn calls, clearly annoyed that he’s still being kept awake. Harry thinks it over, and realizes that he just needs some time. Time away from Zayn. Time away from the sour smell of pot in this room. Time with Niall. Alone. And that’s such a new, scary thought that he all but jumps out of his skin with it. _What the fuck is even happening? This isn’t supposed to go like that._

“Nah. I’m going downstairs, I think. Clear my head.” He squeezes Niall’s hand in a way that he hopes he’ll translate into _come with me_ , and tugs himself clear of the blonde’s body with an incredible amount of effort. _If I even make it downstairs, shit._

Liam and Louis shoot him identical looks of concern, but neither of them says anything. They know it’s unusual for Harry to need his time out, they know that he’s usually the cuddly one, gathering them all into a giant pile of arms and legs and hair and _friendship_.

Harry flicks off the light on his way to the door, taking the stairs without a glance back, and heaving a sigh of relief when he hears a second set of footsteps following behind.

\------

“Are you okay, mate?” Niall asks, leaning in the door frame, watching Harry put away the laundry on his bed with practiced eyes. Harry knows that Niall can see every little thing that might be slightly off about him, but instead of making him tense up and pull away, Niall’s concern washes over him like a warm rain, soothing him.

“Mmm, m’fine Nialler. Just thinking,” Harry says, picking up a pile of folded socks and heading towards the wardrobe with them, trying his best not to lose a pair off the precarious stack he has tucked under his chin.

“Yeah,” Niall sighs, running a hand through his hair and crossing an arm tight over his stomach. Harry knows that gesture well; it’s the one that Niall uses when he’s teetering on the edge of breaching an uncomfortable subject. It’s Niall hoping that he can keep himself together.

“Yeah,” Niall breathes again. “ Um. Haz?”

Harry looks up at him, holds his eyes, green and blue, and swallows hard.

“Hmm?” he asks, putting the last stack of laundry away and closing the drawer.

“Do you, I mean, I dunno. Do you ever think that maybe this _thing_ we’re doing crosses a line? Like. Maybe, sometimes, it’s more than just…”

He trails off then, rolls right into silence and Harry lets out a breath like a whoosh. That’s it, that’s exactly it though isn’t it? The fact that all of this gets to be too much to handle, and Harry sometimes starts wondering if he can even do it anymore, if he can let the weight of whatever this is to keep sitting squarely on his shoulders, pushing him down, with no payback.

Harry lets himself fall backward onto the bed, sinking right into the downy warmth with a sigh. He digs his toes into the carpet, flexing and relaxing them without a conscious thought. What is he even supposed to do right now? It scares him how much power he’s holding, that, his next move could change everything.

“Ni, c’mere,” Harry finally calls, because it’s the only thing he knows, that he needs to feel Niall, his warmth and his weight against him while they have this conversation. Whatever this conversation turns out to be. He isn’t even sure why it’s _Niall_ here in the first place and not Liam or Louis or Zayn, or all of them, really. It’s just that, something about Niall puts him at ease. Something about Niall feels like coming home after a really long holiday, familiar and warm and _just where he’s meant to be._

He’s lying on his back beside Harry now, arms crossed under his head as he stares at the ceiling. Niall’s hair is a little too long, dirty blonde tips just kissing his eyelashes as he blinks. Harry watches him out of the corner of his eye, the line of his jaw, the way he’s biting down on his lip slightly, crooked teeth worrying at a spot in the middle of his bottom lip, and he lets himself think it.

 _He’s beautiful. So fucking beautiful and maybe I love him. Maybe I love_ them.

And there it is. There it fucking is. The truth of it all sitting right on the tip of his tongue, and it’s funny, really, because as much as Harry wants to be scared out of his fucking wits, to act out, to run away screaming, he’s more calm in this moment than he’s been for years. It feels so _good_ to just let it go, to be honest with himself.

“I think. Maybe. It is real, and that. We’re just. Prolonging the inevitable? That probably sounds fucked up.”

To his credit, Niall doesn’t show any surprise at Harry’s choice of words, just rolls up onto one elbow, and looks him dead in the eye.

“Are you just. Is it just you and me, or?” Niall starts, and it’s a whisper, a little tight ghost of a sentence that Harry can tell is tinged with something kind of like hope. “Is it all of us. For you, I mean.”

“All of us, I think. All of you.”

Niall swallows loud enough for Harry to hear it, but he doesn’t make any effort to shy away or change the subject.

“Yeah. Me too,” Niall agrees finally, decisively, and it’s such a relief that Harry thinks maybe his chest is going to explode. It’s probably stupid to think it, but Harry finds himself wondering if this could be a possibility, and then he shakes himself out of it with an old familiar firmness, writes it off as craziness and tries to move on.

“Li and Zayn, they--”

“Yeah--”

“And Louis,” Niall continues, rambling on as if Harry never cut him off. “Lou is jealous. Did you see him tonight? His dick is lonely indeed.”

Harry slaps at him, backhandedly swatting but never actually making contact.

“You’re blushing as bad as Liam,” Niall laughs, catching Harry’s flailing arms and holding them tight against his chest. “Does the thought of Louis’ dick make you squirm Hazza?”

“Ugh, fuck you, Niall. You always have to ruin things. We could be having a pleasant conversation about pancakes and orange juice and you’d find some way to bring someone’s cock into it.”

“We definitely weren’t talking about breakfast food,” Niall retorts, as if Harry needed reminding. How the hell was any of this even happening? They’re seriously not just lying in bed discussing the fact that they want to bang each other and three other guys like it’s the weather are they because that would be insane.

“Are we seriously having this conversation, Niall?”

“The one where we’re both seriously considering the merits of a fucked up five way relationship with our best friends while we‘re both spectacularly baked?”

“That would be the one,” Harry says, and he can’t help himself, he starts giggling because the whole thing is so absurd.

“Then yes, yes we are.” Niall nods, cracking up on the last word, and burying his head in Harry’s chest to stifle the sound.

Giggles subsiding, Harry lets his fingers card through Niall’s soft hair, jumping slightly and pulling away when he feels the older boy’s breath hitch in his chest.

“Don’t stop, ‘s okay. Just different now, I guess. New.” Niall sighs, and Harry can feel his breath through the thin fabric of his shirt, feel it ghosting across his chest and over his ribs and it’s such a strange feeling that Harry knows exactly what Niall means. It’s almost like every touch is such a mixture of old actions and new feelings that it’s almost overwhelming.

Then, in the quiet, Niall’s phone buzzes against Harry’s hip. Dragging his head up, and reaching for his phone, Niall pulls a face, grinning when he’s rewarded with Harry’s laugh.

“Jesus. It’s Lou. Look at this.” Niall snorts, handing Harry the phone.

_Where r u? U better nt b fucking Haz w/o me._

**Nt fucking ne1, u idiot. --H**

Throwing the phone back in Niall’s direction, Harry rolls his eyes in a _what can you do_ type way, and returns to playing with Niall’s hair.

_Wait. H? What have you done with Niall?_

**Got hungry. Decided that he was closer than the kitchen. Sacrifices had to be made. --H**

“You’ll have him busting down the door in a minute,” Niall laughs, hooking one leg over Harry’s and yawning.

_Wht?????? You killed him for your own selfish gain? Say it ain’t so, Hazza._

**I’m rt here, Lou. No, he dnt actually eat me. ’m nt txting u from the dead. Go to sleep u tit, x Niall**

Turning off his phone before Louis can reply, and tossing it unceremoniously toward the ragged old chair in the corner, Niall drops his head back on Harry’s chest and heaves another giant yawn. All at once, Harry remembers how tired he’d been, and fights to keep his stinging, watery eyes from closing.

“Maybe we should actually get _in_ the bed, you know, instead of just flopping on it like a couple of undereducated codfish.”

“Undereducated codfish? What the hell are you on about?” Niall asks, detangling himself from Harry and rounding the bed.

“Dunno,” Harry admits, throwing the covers over Niall’s head as the blonde wrestles a pillow out from under the younger boy’s splayed curls. “’m sleepy, Nialler. Don’t hafta make sense.”

He goes quiet and still, and he’s all but gone when Niall presses a soft, gentle little kiss on his lips.

“Mmm. ’Sat for?” Harry asks, his voice all sleep slurred and slow.

“Do I have to have a reason?” Niall responds.

Harry just pulls Niall closer, nearly dragging his entire weight on top of him, and kisses him, long and sloppy and sweet. He doesn’t let go when they pull apart, just keeps the blonde tucked tight against his side, letting the feeling of Niall’s hand against the bare skin of his hip, and the warmth of their shared body heat lull him to sleep.

\--------

Niall hates mornings. Not in the way that Zayn hates mornings, though waking up isn’t the best part of his day either. It’s more that, sometimes, in the morning, in that hazy space between dreams and being fully awake, you lose a sense of who and what you are for a moment. Not in a creepy coma type way, but like, the way you sometimes forget where you are when you wake up in an unfamiliar place, or how, sometimes, you have to wonder if everything that happened the night before was all in your head.

Niall hates that. He really, really hates it, and honestly, if he made all of last night up in his head, or worse--if he said all of the things he’s pretty sure that he said and Harry _hadn’t_ agreed, well, that would be bad. Like, really bad. As in, shove your head into a running wood chipper bad.

He takes the fact that Harry is asleep right beside him as a good thing, really, and relaxes a little, flopping back into the pillows with something kind of like a contented sigh. His whole body is wound tight with Harry’s from the waist down, legs splayed in ways that will really cause problems if Niall needs to take a piss. It’s kind of cute though, he thinks, _no, it’s really fucking cute_ , he corrects himself, smiling at the way Harry’s hair flutters in and out on the current of his breath as he sleeps.

When he was younger, Niall never really gave much thought to the concept of love. Really, he never gave much thought to any of it if he’s being perfectly honest. As the boys in his form began to show interest in girls, or sometimes boys, Niall just kind of didn’t. It’s not as though he never found anyone attractive, he did, and he found himself fumbling through first kisses and first break-ups with the rest of them, it’s just. He never let himself have any emotional investment.

Maybe it was seeing his parents split up when he was so young, some streak of intrinsic cynicism, or maybe it was just _Niall_ , but he was just not the guy to have feelings like that. He’d never waxed poetic about a beautiful girl, or gave all of his time up to planning a romantic dinner. He didn’t see the point of it all, if he’s being honest. Some part of him, whether it be little or big, was convinced that he was going to end up alone and that probably love was pointless anyway, so…

Looking over at Harry now, Niall kind of wants to punch himself in the face. Part of him is going _you stupid fuck, how could you ever question this_ , and the other part of him, the louder, more teenage boy part of him, is screaming _stop being so fucking sappy you disgusting twat. You’ll be writing Taylor Swift’s next album if you keep this shit up._ It’s funny really, all of this feeling business. He kind of thinks he’s going to throw up and do cartwheels and kill himself violently all at once and really, how the fuck is this not the worst feeling in the entire world? _Why_ was Niall feeling so giddy, so weirdly little girlish, and how the fuck could he make it stop? Settling finally on the theory that aliens ate his brain in the night, Niall takes a deep breath and decides to just go with it.

Prodding slowly at the thoughts as they present themselves in his mind, Niall comes to two conclusions:

1) He’s in love. Pathetically, unrealistically, insanely, fucking stupid in love.  
And  
2) This has to be the most fucked up situation in the world. Or in the top three at least.

What normal person does this? Like who in the fuck even _thought_ this was a good idea. Take a (mostly) straight male, give him four best friends. Add in the element of drugs and ten years’ solid co-dependence and you have a tricky situation. Give the same boy decidedly unholy thoughts, put him in a room with his four best friends, teenage hormones, and five perfectly functioning cocks, and you’re sitting in the middle of an inferno holding a stick of dynamite. But if you go completely off your ass, fuck with the cosmos, throw in words like love and jealousy, and stir, you’ve got yourself a group of completely mental teenage boys who have no fucking clue what they’re doing or what they’re feeling, and the makings of a TV-drama that would win an Emmy in Hell.

_Well, shit. That’s fucking pleasant._

Harry is stirring, eyelids fluttering rapidly as he swims upward against the tide of sleep, and as he begins to stretch out, catlike, Niall tries to school his face into something a little less alarming. He’s pretty sure that he’s grinning like an idiot, grinning so hard that his face literally hurts and yeah, maybe someone looking like a coked out crazy person isn’t exactly what Harry fancies waking up to.

He thinks he has his face arranged just this side of Cruella DeVille, and then Harry is looking at him, sleepy green eyes sweeping here and there over his features almost shyly. Niall has to bite his lip hard to keep from wrapping Harry in his arms and raining down kisses all over his face because _goddamn_ he’s cute and fuck, fuck, fuck, his heart is pounding right out of his chest.

“Hi,” and just like that, Niall’s fears are gone, swept away on Harry’s words as if they’d never been there in the first place. It’s the tone of his voice maybe, or the way that he lets his hand come up, slightly uncoordinated and sluggish, to poke him on the nose, but it’s _something_. Something so innately Harry and so much like flying that Niall kind of feels like being scared in the first place was completely stupid.

“Hey.” Niall is surprised how softly it comes, the way it sits on his tongue and dissolves like spun-sugar. He doesn’t remember ever saying anything in that voice. Ever. The thought crosses his mind again that maybe he’s just lost his fucking shit all together, but he doesn’t dwell on it. Harry is right there, real and warm, and his fingers literally itch to touch him.

“Um. So is this the part where we act like nothing ever happened? Because, yeah, I could do that, if you want me to.”

“Don’t wanna. ‘S all true,” Niall says, watching Harry’s eyes light up like a kid on Christmas. God, he’s adorable.

“Good, because I’m pretty sure that if I don’t kiss you in the next thirty seconds that we may all die. Apocalyptic, meteors raining down and zombies, and whatever, fuck it. Can I kiss you?”

Niall’s head is absolutely spinning out of control. Harry actually asked permission and it’s so cute that possibly he’s going to die or spontaneously combust, or--

“Wouldn’t want to put the whole planet in danger, what do you take me for, an asshole? Je-”

_Jesus._

_Jesus, Mary, and fucking Joseph._

Possibly Niall should apologise for the blasphemy, but holy shit, he can’t breathe. His lungs won’t expand and his heart is in his throat and it’s a possibility that his stomach may fall out of his ass and what even. He’d always heard girls talk about fireworks and stars and flying monkeys, no. Wait. Not that. No monkeys.  
That would be terrifying. But all of the bullshit he’s ever heard is the truth. His fireworks are more like atomic bombs and his stars have gone supernova, but it’s all there. It’s good, it’s so fucking good that Niall thinks maybe it’s even better than sex. Maybe. That may be pushing it, but there you are. He’s gone so girly and fucking stupid and kind of puddly, and it’s all so strange and new and perfect. Possibly perfectly pathetic, but perfect nonetheless.

“Holy. Shit.” Um, yeah, holy shit pretty much sums it up. Niall tries to say something, he really does, but all that comes out is something that sounds kind of like “Nyuugh,” and so he promptly shuts up. Clearly his brain has fallen out.

“Niiiiialler!” Harry starts, bouncing where he’s sat. “We totally just had our first kiss.”

“Haz,” and oh, whoa. Apparently he found his voice. Good, he was beginning to believe he’d have to go around grunting like a troll for the rest of his life. “We’ve kissed at least a thousand times; you’re intimately acquainted with my dick, that ship left the port a long time ago.”

“No, no. I know that, you idiot. But like--” he flops back down on the bed with a flourish, pulling Niall with him. “That was. The first time, you know, sober.” A pause. Harry’s eyebrows furrow, and Niall knows that he’s thinking, trying on words in his head to find just the right ones to say. “It’s real now, you know? No more playing games.”

“It wasn’t you know. I mean. A game? At least, not for me. I tried to. I wanted to believe it was because this is all so…complicated, but.”

“I,” Harry says, looking Niall straight in the eye. “Would it be completely pathetic and crazy and inappropriate of me to say that I’m in love with you, right now?”

“Probably,” Niall admits, a little laugh huffing out in the silence. His face hurts from smiling. This is, this is, he doesn‘t know what this is to be honest. “But I’m willing to overlook it if you are.”

Upstairs, in a puppy pile where they left them, the three missing pieces of their puzzle sleep on.

\--------

 

“G?”

She lingers a moment before she looks up at him, pretending to take in the last few lines of a magazine article that she hasn’t even started.

“Hmm?”

“Can I talk to you?”

Harry has been taller than her for a couple of years, but Gemma can’t help but think how small he looks, standing in her doorway like this, bare-footed, soft eyed, and confused maybe? There’s an air about him that she can’t quite pin down, a strange energy that seems all at once to be excitement and fear.

“Yeah. C’mere.” Patting the bed across from her, and tossing her magazine in the corner, she takes in the split second’s hesitation in Harry’s eyes, the way he takes one full breath and then two before coming any closer.

_Well, that’s definitely unusual._

Sitting at her feet, ankles crossed, long legs pulled up to his chin, he makes a strange picture. He’s always had so much length, been so lanky, and yet, he’s always tried to fold himself away when he’s upset. When he was a kid, their mom would find him hiding alone in a lower cupboard, or in his toy bin, pushed so far into himself that he could close the door and disappear for hours into the dark.

“Do you believe in soulmates, Gem?” he asks, taking her off guard. He’s mumbling against his knee, but he watches her face closely all the same, as if he can search, dig out all of the answers he needs through careful examination of her features.

“Um. I guess so, yeah,” she replies, focusing for a second on the pattern of her comforter before answering. “I haven’t given it much thought honestly, I mean, I hope that there’s a soulmate out there for everyone, but I haven’t found that yet, you know, so I can’t say for sure.”

“I…fuck.” Harry whispers, low and tired, turning his eyes to look out of her bedroom window and out onto the street. A little girl is walking by with her mum, carrying what looks like a really old teddy bear and eating an ice-lolly, and despite himself Harry smiles.

“Haz, is this about Niall?” Gemma asks, almost laughing when Harry’s head snaps up so quickly that he gives himself a crick in the neck.

“How did you know--?”

“I know you. I’ve known you your whole life, I’m not an idiot. Annnnd---” she continues, pointing out the window into the garden below. “I watched you making out by the gate. Really, you shouldn’t do that in public, you know how bad the neighbour’s heart is…”

Harry snorts. “In that case, maybe I should do it more often. Jesus, she’s a nightmare.”

“You ruined her prized begonias.”

“I was _five_!’

“Yeah well…” Gemma says, patting Harry on the knee and shaking her head at the memory. “Maybe you’re right. I let the cat out a few days ago, and she was ringing by the time I got back in, insisting that he’d already dug a hole in the garden and terrorized her poodle. Anyway--” she continues, leaning over to open a drawer in her bedside table and pulling out two small bottles. “Bubblegum Pink or erm, Lively Lavender?”

“What happened to the red?” Harry asks, taking both bottles of nail polish and inspecting the colours in the light filtering through the curtains.

“Roommate nicked it, the bitch,” Gemma growls, taking the sparkling purple that Harry hands her and putting the pink back in the drawer. “You and Niall, when did?” she asks, the last bit muffled as she uses her teeth to unscrew the stuck lid.

“Um. Last night, actually.” Harry sighs, uncrossing his ankles and plopping one foot into his sister’s lap. “Bit…bit complicated actually.” He pauses, takes another deep breath, and Gemma can’t help but feel like he’s steeling himself for something, grappling with ideas and thoughts almost too much for him to handle.

“Do you think you can have more than one soul mate, Gem? Like, if finding a soulmate is a one in a million chance, isn’t the idea of having more than one impossible?”

“I really don’t know, Hazza. It depends on the situation I guess.” She sighs. “Here, other foot, and don’t wiggle, they’ll smudge. Why the curiosity anyway?”

Harry shrugs. Gemma knows that he means to be nonchalant, but the gesture falls short. He’s hunched in on himself again, straightening out just long enough to pick up a book from her desk and pretend to fall into it.  
Could it be just passing curiosity that has her brother, or is he asking for the sake of his own life? He’s always been so close, so dependent on his friends, and he did seem really upset when she mentioned Perrie this morning, but maybe jumping to that conclusion is going a little too far. As she puts the finishing touches on his nails with a flourish, Gemma vows to keep a little closer eye on the boys from now on.

\--------

Liam thinks he might go crazy. Hell, he may have already crossed that line. Surely standing in his closet pawing at his laundry like a dog digging for a bone isn’t exactly the sanest thing anyone has ever done, but goddamn he wants his fucking shirt back. He isn’t even sure why, like it’s not that the damn thing has any special meaning, but it’s his _favourite shirt_ and the fact that he can’t find it is really bothering him.

He has to crawl out of the pile of laundry covering his room on his hands and knees. This situation has clearly grown desperate. His shirt is missing, he’s crawling round on his bedroom floor, and now it seems he’s lost his phone and he’s going to _kill_ the asshole responsible.

He finally finds his phone buried under some old underwear, and not only is that completely disgusting, now he has to put the infernal nasty ass thing against his cheek. Someone is going to pay for this. Right after he boils his face off. Punching in a familiar number, he grinds his teeth while he waits for someone to pick up.

“Vas happenin’?” Zayn answers on the third ring, and his voice is so warm and sexy that Liam goes momentarily stupid with it.

“Uh. Liam? Hullo?”

“Yeah, uh. Sorry. Um. Sorry.” God he sounds ridiculous. _Put your brain back in, you idiot_. “So…”

“I don’t have your shirt Liam,” Zayn huffs, knowing instinctively what’s coming. “I haven’t suddenly acquired it in the last 24 hours.”

“Then where the fuck is it? You know where it is, don’t you? Don’t lie to me, Zayn Malik.” His voice is rising in both pitch and volume, and Liam knows he sounds insane. Possibly like the psychopathic weirdo detective in a really shitty murder mystery.

“Jesus fuck. Would you chill? I might possibly have an idea about its whereabouts, but that’s classified information. If I told you, I‘d have to kill you”

“Me? Kill _me_? I will…I dunno what I’ll do, but it won’t be good, I can promise you that. Now tell me.”

“You’re truly terrifying mate, honestly. I’m just shaking in fear over here,” Zayn deadpans, and goddamn him, as much as Liam _wants_ to be angry, wants to make him pay, he can’t. He appears to lose his balls and his mind every time Zayn is involved. Fucker.

“I, but. UGH. I hate you. I so fucking hate you. Can’t I at least have a hint?” Liam pleads, knowing full well he’ll get nowhere with Zayn.

“Nup. No can do, Payno, Sorry. See you at Haz’s later, yeah?”

“Mmm,” Liam grumps, ending the call, throwing his phone, and huffing a big sigh as he watches it disappear into another pile of laundry.

\-----------

“Why the fuck isn’t he bothering you, then?” Niall asks, trying valiantly to be annoyed and failing under Harry’s unwavering gaze. “I mean, well, the point is, you’re just a fuckhead, really. You know that he’s been looking, annoying the hell out of all of us and you just let him.”

“I don’t see you running to tell him who has it,” Harry laughs, pulling Niall in closer and dropping kisses on his forehead and cheeks and nose.

“No way in hell. I enjoy seeing him suffer, it’s just. Why does he have to be so… Liam-ish about it?”

“Possibly because he is Liam, love, therefore, everything he does is Liam-ish by default.”

“Fucker,” Niall grumbles, catching Harry’s answering smile between his teeth and kissing him hard.

“Mmm, I think we have a problem.”

“What’s that?” Niall asks, punctuating his question with another kiss.

“I’m literally never going to get tired of doing this. ‘S problematic and all, cause, at some point we’ve got to be productive human beings and I would really rather just....” Harry trails off, running his hand under Niall’s shirt and letting them ghost across the expanse of his chest.

“Could suck you off, that’s productive,” Niall offers, pressing himself closer into Harry’s touch.

“Later,” Harry agrees, withdrawing his hands from Niall’s shirt in an attempt to keep his head clear. “We really should talk about this, you know. I mean, about rather we’re going to, I mean, should we bring this up to, you know, the boys?”

“This as in, you and me,” Niall asks, pointing between them for clarification. “Or this as in, this, us wanting them?”

“Both.” Harry answers, catching Niall’s eye with confusion. “I mean, it’s all happening so fast, and I’m really fucking scared. Like, it’s lame and shit, saying that, but it’s true. What if they think we’re like, pervs?”

“Haz, they know we’re pervs. It’s kind of acknowledged when you introduce your dick to their mouths on a regular basis. But,” he pauses, holding the younger boy tight against him almost in an effort to comfort himself as well. “This is really bothering you, isn’t it?”

Harry nods against Niall’s chest, forgetting, for the moment, all about how lame he may or may not look. It’s just the two of them anyway, and Niall wouldn’t take the piss about something so important.

“I had a talk with Gem.”

“Shit. Troubled Twinkle Toes, huh?” He grins despite himself as Harry waggles one big foot in the air, showing off his purple toenails properly.

“What are you laughing about, it isn’t funny!” Harry pouts, quickly tucking his foot back underneath him and staring at Niall in incredibly cute albeit cross way.

“Sorry. ‘M not. It’s just, you’re adorable and I love you, okay? I’ve always thought it was pretty cute when you let her paint your toes, but now I get to say that, and it’s kind of funny how things changed.”

“Hmmph. I love you too, you dick.” Harry relents, relaxing within Niall’s hold again. “But seriously, how do we even, I mean its not like you can just go up to your mates and say ‘hey, fancy a good fuck?’ or anything.”

“Well you could…”

“Niall!”

“What? I bet it’d work on Lou.”

Harry has to give him that one. “But. Like. I love you, all of you, and---” he burrows his head into Niall’s neck, and hopes he can’t feel the heat of his blush.

“Like, Zayn has Perrie and Liam loves Zayn and how the fuck are you even supposed to put something like this into words? It sounds so weird. But its not. I just. It’s us, you know, it’s. It’s just us.”

“Exactly,” Niall says, pulling Harry in for a kiss. “It’s us, Haz. It’s insane, but it’s us, and we kind of just say fuck it to the rules all the time anyway, don’t we? We’ve never been normal, why the hell should we start now?”

\------------

Yeah, Louis thinks maybe, just maybe, just this once, he could kill Niall. Not that you can kill a person more than once, but. Okay so perhaps he’ll just cut his dick off and throw it in battery acid. Although that would be a shame. And Harry….

The thing is though, if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s probably _definitely_ so jealous he can‘t think straight, Louis would think catching Harry like that, standing by the gate, little hips canting up into Niall’s, tongues wrapped together in some weird erotic dance, would be catastrophically, devastatingly, hot.

He’s not got his hand round his dick or anything, certainly not. He’s too _angry_. They can’t just go fucking things up like this, it’s not, it’s not in the rules. No one is supposed to break off and, ugh, hump like that, not while they’re sober, and fucking definitely not without Louis.

Especially not Harry. Or Niall. Or Liam. Or Zayn. Fuck it, he just wants them all and he wants to fucking punch a puppy in the face. Or something.

Louis is all but homicidal, and if, later, he comes harder than he’s ever come before, back arching, barely choking back a scream at the image of Harry and Niall, well, it just fuels his fire.

\-------------

Louis is quiet, and when Louis is quiet, something is about to go catastrophically wrong. The tension is hanging in the room like a suffocating fog, and honestly, no one has the slightest idea what’s going on, at least, not definitely. It’s just another night, and, like any other night, things should be buoyant by now. Liam should be laughing and Zayn should be on his second cigarette, and yet, they’re not. All four of them are kind of just staring at Louis, truthfully, each trying to figure out why he’s being such a weird little ball of...weird.

“Lou, what is--?”

“WELL, I think we should all have a little discussion. Catch up and shit because I think some of us are just a little out of the loop.”

“What the fuck are you mumbling on about, Tommo? Catch up? We just saw each other like, yesterday.” Zayn asks, shooting the older boy a look that clearly has what-the-fuck-is-your-problem written all over it.

Louis merely holds up one little hand, shaking his head and shushing Zayn all in the same instant.  
“Does anyone have anything they’d like to share with the class?” Louis asks, snapping his head around to look Harry straight in the eye.

“Well, I still can’t find my--”

“That is not what I meant Liam, but thank you.” Louis snaps, cutting him off before he could go on another rant about his stupid fucking shirt. “What about you, Niall? Harry? Got anything you’d like to say?”

Niall shifts awkwardly beside him, thigh grazing thigh with a jolt of electricity that momentarily makes Harry forget that shit, Louis clearly knows, and shit, this could get ugly.

“Erm…” he hedges, grappling around in his brain for words for a minute before deciding fuck it all and taking Niall’s hand, twining their fingers together and looking back at Louis with something a bit like defiance in his eyes. He’s not exactly expecting Louis’s to go wide as saucers in turn, but they do.

“You’re….”

“Together, yeah,” Niall finishes, and really, Harry couldn’t be more thankful because under Louis’ relentless gaze, he’d been finding it a little hard to breathe.

Liam lets out his breath in a great whoosh, and Zayn really doesn’t look nearly quite as shocked as he should.

“How did you know, Lou? I mean, recent development is a bit of an understatement.”

“I SAW YOU WITH YOUR TONGUE DOWN HIS THROAT, YOU GREAT TWAT. IN THE FRONT FUCKING GARDEN. HONESTLY. NEXT TIME, TAKE OUT AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THE PAPER FOR GODS SAKE!”

“Jesus.” And yeah, Liam basically had that right. Harry is taken aback by the anger in Louis’ voice, and really, what was he going to say, he couldn’t argue, everything Louis had said was true. Well, not about the paper.

“Louis…” Niall starts a little tentatively. “We were going to tell you. It’s just a bit complicated, now you mention it.”

“What could possibly complicated, you disappear with him last night, you what, fuck him, and suddenly you’re together. It’s so simple that it’s actually disgusting.”

“We didn’t fuck, Lou. Christ. Would you just…”

“No. No. I don’t want to listen to some shitty sappy story about how you swept him off his feet, Niall. We won’t even talk about the fact that you lied to me.”

“IF YOU WOULD MAYBE SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR TWO SECONDS,” Zayn roars, looking between Harry’s horror stricken face and Louis’ livid one, “WE COULD ALL HEAR WHAT HAPPENED.”

“I didn’t lie to you,” Niall starts again, but Harry cuts him off.

“We didn’t fuck. I went downstairs because I got upset, Niall followed, and yeah. He’s right, it’s complicated.”

“How,” Louis asks through gritted teeth, “is it complicated, Harry?”

“Because I’m in love with you, too,” Harry explains, watching three chins fall open again and kind of wincing because, yeah, that’s not even the half of it.

“You’re in...Wait. What?” Louis asks, finally dropping his anger in exchange for confusion.

“I’m in love with you…..”

“And Niall?”

“And Niall.” Harry confirms, wishing that could just be the end of it already. “And Zayn. And. Uh. Liam?”

Dead. Silence.

Harry chews the inside of his cheek. Niall picks at the loose black rubber line on his Converse. Liam coughs. No one says a word.

In the real world, they would laugh this off. It would all be some kind of joke. In the crazy town they now inhabit, however, the closest thing they get to normal is the snick of Zayn’s lighter as it catches the end of one of his perfectly rolled joints.

Honestly, Harry is starting to think that Zayn has the right idea.

“I, yeah. I, um. Agree. With Harry. On all that, all that stuff, yeah. Loving you and shit.”

Niall is so awkward and inelegant and just Niall that something about it breaks the ice in the room, and finally, Harry starts to remember what it feels like to take a normal sized breath. The fact that no one else has even moved, let alone said a thing, doesn’t exactly ease his mind, but he squeezes Niall’s hand anyway, and waits it out.

It could have been ten seconds, or maybe ten years, but when Louis bowls him over as he launches himself into Harry’s lap, time doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

“I hate you. I hate both of you. I thought you had fucked everything up and you were going to run off together and fuck.” Voice breaking at the end, almost full out sobbing, Louis kisses them. First Harry and then Niall, so deep and sincere that it almost physically hurts. Then, “Li?” Louis asks, crawling back in his direction with slow, measured movements. “Liam?”

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Shit. Hi.”

“Hey yourself.” Harry grins, moving in on him as well. “Are you okay, Liam? With us? Like this?”

Liam nods, and Harry almost laughs, his face alight with something he doesn’t even have words for.

“Okay. You’re okay,” Niall repeats, all at once reassuring and questioning. Liam nods again, and it’s almost comical really, how he doesn’t seem to be able to do anything but nod, and yet, those silly little gestures mean so much. “I’m going to kiss you now, okay? Yeah?” and before Liam can even finish going through the motions, Niall’s warm mouth dips down to cover his in a soft but confident kiss.

It’s just as it all starts to sink in, just as Louis gives in to hysterical giggles and Harry reminds himself that he’s not a thirteen year old girl, and therefore, should probably not swoon, that they hear it.

The slamming of the attic door had never been so loud. Zayn had gone, leaving nothing in his place but the sour smell of weed, and a few dying embers.

\--------

Liam knows he’d been falling in love for quite some time. The truth of it is, maybe he‘d known he would all along. When they were kids, Liam wasn‘t exactly the most popular boy in the world, in fact, he spent a lot of his time getting bullied by the older, bigger, kids. One afternoon, he thinks, maybe it was in the spring of year three, Harry had been absent from school, sick with the flu. Niall had a dentist appointment, and, as usual, Zayn and Louis had both found themselves in detention. Again. Liam was the only one in their group that had been allowed out on break, and he knew that was going to mean trouble. He can remember the taste of wet mulch in his mouth, the pressure of a heavy foot in the small of his back where the year eight had him pinned to the ground. He had been wearing red shoes. Liam has no idea why he remembers that particular detail, but he does, even now, it’s the only part of the memory he can recall in colour. It’d had been around the third kick he’d taken in the ribs by one of Red Shoes’ gang members, a lanky kid with a face like a rat, that somehow, Zayn and Louis had appeared on the scene. Breathing hard around the pain in his side, and revelling in the fact that his body was no longer being held fast against the ground, it took a few minutes for Liam to understand what was going on.

Zayn had Red Shoes’ arms pinned behind his back, his friends long gone, and, with a look like fire, Louis punched him right in the face. Tiny little Louis had broken the nose of a kid four times his size. Liam couldn’t help it, he laughed even though it hurt, and when Zayn had come and all but scooped him bodily off the ground, he was still laughing, great tears rolling down his dirty face that stained the collar of his baby blue shirt an ugly brown.

Louis had been suspended for a week, and he took it without so much as a word of complaint, not that it turned out to be much of a punishment. When the news got back around to Louis’s mum, Jay didn’t even punish him, rather, she sent him round to Liam’s with a pint of ice-cream and her love. Louis spent the week watching TV in his pyjamas while the rest of them went to school.

So yeah, they’d always been his everything. Protectors and friends and brothers, so Liam supposes it makes sense that it happened this way.

Falling in love with them was an inevitability; it had only ever been a question of time.

\---------

Zayn has always been one to need his space, but this, this thing he’s been doing for the past two weeks, it’s nowhere near his usual need for time out, and he knows it. This is deliberate self exile. Leaning back against the cold concrete of the low wall surrounding the local park, Zayn takes out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and shakes one out, the last of the second pack he’s smoked today. He may have always been a smoker, but it’s never been this bad, he’s completely out of control and he knows it. It’s just, it feels good, and with each long drag, he feels a bit like he’s burning away a bit more of the scream that’s been threatening to rip out his throat since he left Harry’s attic way too many days ago.

He’s had a headache for the last 3 days, a slow, dull ache behind his eyes that just won’t let up. His mum would tell him that he’s been thinking too much, and for once, he’d have to agree with her. He just can’t let it go. The image of his best friends, all of them, lips on lips on lips on lips has been superimposed on his eyelids since that day, and it’s driving him insane. When he’s not willing his dick back down at the thought, he has to focus on the ache in his gut, burning him straight through with guilt and jealousy and something quite a lot like hope that makes him want to jump off the nearest bridge.

It wasn’t supposed to go that far, they’d promised on a sun-soaked Saturday a year and a half back that it would mean nothing. They were just bored and horny and that was that. Stupid, really to have believed that. As one time became two and then three and then almost every weekend, it got harder and harder to pretend. When he started thinking things like _beautiful_ and _perfect_ , Zayn knew he was well and truly fucked. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the whole thing imploded, and now it had, despite his better efforts.

The thing about Zayn is that, as much as he tries to hide his feelings, he never could quite hide them from himself. The truth of it is, there isn’t any such thing as no strings attached to him, and he knew that before he started. He’s a romantic. When he lets himself fall, its hard and fast and unrelenting, a bright light with the power to burn him alive.

They all think it never mattered to him. They think he’s not affected, that the nights spent in that attic were only ever about drugs and getting off, but they’re all wrong. It’s been hard on him from the beginning really, and it got worse as things carried on. Somewhere along the passing of the years, he fell in love with the four of them, a kind of love that you know you’ll never get away from. Zayn was stupid. Zayn let himself fall into the kind of that leaves permanent marks.

They’re everything. They’re every-fucking-thing and that’s really all there is to say when you get down to it. The two weeks he’s spent without him have nearly made him crazy. He’s lost weight and lost sleep and his little sisters are kind of scared of him these days. They say he looks like a zombie, dead eyed and blank. Trisha has been watching him closely for days, wondering, he knows, if something had happened between him and Perrie.

If only.

Perrie he could deal with. This is something far more than he can even begin to get his mind around. It makes him feel like shit really, he’d always done this, given himself over to the four of them, time and time again despite Perrie. It’s part of the reason he left that attic, honestly. For the last year, he’s only been half hers, and it tears him apart. He’s always been one to give all he’s got to the ones he loves, and he can’t with her. It’s like, he loves her, he loves her so much, she’s beautiful and kind and talented and everything he’d ever need in a different world, but it’s not _this_ world. This world is topsy turvy and all wrong and he will never love her enough, he loves _them_ too much. Zayn just doesn’t have enough left over to love _her_ properly.

When he first started dating Perrie, he was fifteen, and she was literally the stuff his dreams were made of. But even then, he remembers, he’d find any excuse to merge his life with his friends and his life with Perrie into one. He’d invite her out with them on Friday nights, and for a while, that worked. She was just happy to be with him, and he was content with the fact that he didn’t feel as if his whole being was being pulled in half. Then she wanted more of him to herself, and he began to feel a bit like he left little pieces of himself in both places, one here, one there, one here and one there, hers and theirs until what was left of Zayn in the moment wasn’t really _Zayn_ at all just fragments of a boy who wished he could just give all of them what they deserved.

He lived constantly on borrowed time.

Now it’s all fucked up. He’s pushed his friends away, and he can’t bring himself to go to Perrie because as much as he loves her and as much as it’s not her fault, running to her and away from them feels too much like betrayal. Though, he supposes, being here and not there, with them is a little like betrayal in itself. They’re offering him everything he always knew he wanted, and he won’t take it. He can’t deal with the thought that they could be happy without him either, it tears him apart. Jealousy and anger and sadness and bitterness all roll in him like boiling water, so Zayn does the only thing he can do. He takes another drag off his dwindling cigarette, lets the smoke curl around, covering him like a shawl, and does nothing.

\---------

Liam is dying, he’s pretty sure. Like literally, physically dying. They all are. Piece by piece and second by second they dwindle, and if Zayn stays gone much longer, they’ll be nothing of them left. At least a hundred times, he’s wondered if Zayn is ebbing away too in his absence, or if, like concrete, he’s holding strong.  
They’ve been a wreck, a complete and total wreck. Days and Nights that would have, two weeks ago, been spent in Harry’s attic, laughing and getting high, have been spent in a pathetic puppy pile on Harry’s bedroom floor.

The attic is _their_ place and it doesn’t feel like home anymore without Zayn. Nothing feels like home anymore if he’s being honest. It’s almost like they’re all being haunted, tormented by the empty space Zayn left and the lingering ghost of his smile. Louis has taken to carrying around a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds, Zayn’s favourite, in his pocket. Sometimes, he’ll light one just to watch it burn. The smell comforts him, Liam knows. If he notices the way Louis’ hands shake, barely a movement at all, he doesn’t mention it, doesn’t talk about the ashes that fall like snow at Louis’ feet.

Niall has all but stopped eating, and Harry’s gone stonily quiet, curling up in a jacket Zayn left behind somewhere along the years and clenching his fists so hard that Liam knows it must hurt. More than once, he’s pried Harry’s fingers apart himself, kissed the little crescent shaped bruises left by Harry’s nails one by one and hoped, prayed, that all of this will end soon.

None of them can keep going like this. Not with kisses and not with silence. As much as they love each other, as much as they spend their time touching, kissing, holding on to each other for dear life, it still feels a bit like Liam’s lost at sea, alone and exhausted, ready to just give in and let the tide sweep him away.

\-------------

“I love you, Zee.”

She’s so sincere, always has been, and it kind of makes Zayn want to fry himself in a vat of very hot oil.

“Love you too, Pez.” It’s a whisper, soft and low, but he says it, because, really, what the fuck else is he supposed to say? It’s not like it isn’t true, anyway, he does love her. He loves her _so fucking much_ that it makes his heart actually hurt, clench so tight in his chest that for a while, he entertains the thought that maybe he’s having an honest to god heart attack.

Her fingers trail over his bare chest, soft and warm, and Zayn has to remind himself how to breathe. Slamming his eyes shut tight, he tries to center himself. This is _Perrie_ with him right now, and he has to stay here in the moment with her, she deserves that. She deserves so fucking much more than that, if Zayn thinks about it, but he’s giving her all he can. He’s trying. It’s unbelievable how hard he’s trying, trying to be valiant, trying to be good, trying to be _hers_ , but honestly, sometimes, he just gets so _tired of pretending_. Sometimes her touches twist themselves into something entirely different, her hands broader, rougher, more boyish, more like _theirs_. Her eyes turn green, her laugh louder, her voice melting into something that sounds like Irish lullabies and longing for old favourite shirts.

Sometimes she’s not Perrie at all, and sometimes, he’s not Zayn, just the few remaining pieces of a boy who has no idea how he even got here in the first place.

“Zayn?”

“Hmm?”

She’s got him fixed with a look that’s something like forgiveness, and as her hair tickles his skin, he wonders what she knows and how he ever deserved her to begin with.

“You’re not here anymore, are you?”

It’s the way she says it, really, it’s just not quite enough like a question. She sounds resigned almost, like someone finally saying a truth they’ve long kept silent. He meets her eyes, as hard as it is to do it, as much as it hurts, he meets her eyes, and he knows. The last thread holding together the unfurling ribbon of their two year long relationship was just severed without a word. He lets go, finally, irrevocably, he lets fucking go, and part of him, the part that’s still decent and honourable and not stained with all of his shortcomings, hopes he’ll burn for it.

“Is it someone else?” she asks, not altogether sounding like she really wants to know. Zayn knows she must be breaking, wishes there was something he could do to stop it, but knows that all of his efforts now would be way too little too late, so he just nods. Honesty is all that he has left to give, and honestly, it has always been someone else, four someone elses, to be exact, the only parts of him he knows he could never, ever let go.

\--------

Gemma is actually the one that answers the door, but Anne lingers behind her, half hidden in the shadows thrown by their bodies in the hallway. Both of them look angry, in fact, it’s kind of eerie how much they look alike right now: twin flames ready to set him afire.

“Malik,” and its literally the coldest Gemma has ever spoken to him, all ice and sharp edges, and holy shit, maybe Zayn should just piss right off before they eat him.

“Er. Hi?”

“Hi? _Hi_? You absolute _twat_. You come around here after _two fucking weeks_ and all you can say is _Hi_?”

Honestly, Zayn is pretty sure that Gemma’s complete hatred of orange is the only thing keeping her from murder in the first. And why is she even here right now to terrorize him, she’s just had a break, surely she can’t be home for the weekend again already? The universe is conspiring against him.

“Gem…” Anne says, a placating hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Come in, Zayn.” she adds, almost as an afterthought, and, as Zayn attempts to sidle past Gemma without either touching her or being melted by her death glare, he’s almost thanks God for Anne Cox. Or he would, if she didn’t look like she was three seconds from bludgeoning him to death with a vase.

He follows her into the kitchen, trying his best to ignore the fact that he feels like he’s walking to the gallows, and failing rather miserably. _Fuck_ , he knows he’s been a tit, but if they kill him, well, it kind of puts a damper on his big plans to fall at his friends’ feet and beg for mercy. Actually, now that he’s thinking about it, grovelling on bended knee to Anne and Gemma as well is probably a good idea. At least, maybe then they’d leave a little bit of his body for his mum to bury after they rip him to shreds.

Gemma shoves him roughly down into the first kitchen chair they come to and Jesus fucking Christ, he’s going to die.

“Do you want to tell me _why_ my son’s been moping around like he’s lost his kitten for two weeks or is it perfectly legitimate for me to assume that you’re just a complete prick and kick you out of my house?”

Zayn has never _ever_ , in ten fucking years, heard Anne call _anyone_ a prick, let alone him, and if he didn’t already know he’d royally dicked it up, he’d know now beyond even a shadow of doubt.

“If this is about Niall, Zayn, I swear to fucking _God_.” For Christ’s sake, he didn’t even know Gemma knew about Niall and Harry, and well, yeah, it kind of _is_ about them in a way but he didn’t….

“Wait, what about Niall?” Anne asks, fixing Gemma with one of those tell-me-now-or-feel-my-wrath sort of looks.

“Er….H is dating him?” It comes out like a question, not a statement of fact, and really Zayn’s actually fucking fascinated by how quickly Gemma just transitioned from acting like a hellhound, to a wounded giraffe on the Serengeti but he guesses that having to out your little brother when your mom is already breathing fire will do that to you.

Interestingly, anti-climatically, Anne just kind of deflates, collapsing into a chair with a great whoosh and a wrinkled brow. Huh. Zayn knows that Harry’s mum is going to be okay with it, she’s the least homophobic person he’s ever met, but at the moment, he kind of hopes that…whatever, that she doesn’t find out about the five of them until much, much later, for his safety as well as her own sanity. Okay, Zayn just wants to save his own ass, sue him.

“Well, I can’t really say I’m surprised.” Anne starts, and Zayn literally honest to god snorts because _no fucking shit it’s not surprising_. Except yeah, now probably isn’t the best time for snorting derisively, and he claps his hand over his mouth so hard that he thinks he maybe just knocked out three of his teeth.  
Gemma laughs, real, bright, raucous laughter, and Anne grins, and Zayn is completely at sea because, like, what? _What the fuck is happening?_

“Easy, Malik, don’t hurt yourself,” Gemma rasps, still tittering at what he assumes is the completely bewildered look on his face. Wait. Is he actually about to be left off the hook here? Because he was just sarcastic as fuck at a completely inappropriate time? Where did all the logic go?

“Okay, so. Here’s the thing, Zayn. You look so confused right now that I can’t even be mad. I don’t know what you did, or what he did, or what happened, but just. Don’t hurt him like that again. He’s my son, and you’re practically my son and I would really, really hate to have to kill you.”

Zayn has no fucking clue what just happened, but, as he takes a deep breath and heads for the stairs, he’s pretty sure that, yeah, it’s all going to be alright.

\--------------

Liam doesn’t let out a tiny little _sob_ at the sight of Zayn, definitely not, but Harry does jump up and down like a kid who’s just been told he’s going to Disney World.

Like, Zayn doesn’t even get a word out before Harry is in his arms, hair askew and limbs flailing. It’s a matter of seconds really, until they’re all on top of him, all hands and feet, and Liam is almost a hundred percent sure that Louis is actually crying and he can’t breathe. Or maybe, he’s just finally breathing again for the first time in weeks, either way, his chest is too tight and he’s light and heavy all at the same time, his whole body, every cell literally screaming for Zayn’s touch. He thinks maybe if he doesn’t get a hand on his bare skin soon, he’s actually going to burst into flame.

“Get off me you tits, I can’t breathe.” Zayn finally says, trying valiantly to extract himself from Harry’s grip. However, he’s doing a hell of a good impression of a koala and it takes Zayn literally two sharp jabs in the ribs and the threat of a punch on the nose to get him to let go.

Niall is smiling so hard that it looks painful, and Louis is sitting with his knees tight against his chest, chewing at a nail on his shaking left hand and wiping his wet eyes with the other.

Zayn, for his part, is just kind of kneeling in the doorway looking so pathetic and pathetically hopeful at the same time that Liam’s heart jumps right into his throat and he has to physically stop himself from flattening him and kissing all the air out of his lungs.

“I am so, so fucking sorry. I left and I was an ass and …” His voice actually breaks, slipping into something high and raw for a fraction of a second and Liam can’t help it anymore, his whole body is singing with a chorus of _ohgodohgodimissedyouithoughtiwasgoingtodieimissedyouiloveyou_ , and god he has to _feel him, right now._

He’s in Zayn’s lap before he even registers movement, and in the next second, he’s got his hand fisted, twined into the front of Zayn’s shirt and his dragging him down, lips meeting in what is quite possibly the most desperate, fierce kiss of his entire life.

Niall closes in on them, and Liam loosens his grip on Zayn _just enough_ for Niall to cup Zayn’s chin in his hand and turn him round to meet his eye.

“Don’t. Don’t ever fucking say you’re sorry. You’re here now and…” and then Niall is kissing Zayn too, and Liam almost laughs at the way no one can seem to finish their sentences but he’d rather grab Harry and nuzzle into his hair. Louis is crawling into Harry’s lap, his whole body shaking and Harry smiles so fondly down at him that it almost breaks Liam’s heart.

“Shh, Lou. C’mere, its okay. I love you. Babe, stop crying.” Harry’s wiping Louis’s face with the pad of his thumb, chasing the tears as they course down his cheeks, and Louis is looking so hopelessly fucking gone that Liam can’t help but haul them both in tighter against his chest.

The ache that had been eating away at him for weeks, tearing a hole straight through him was gone, and it’s kind of funny, because now that Liam thinks about it, he feels like it was never there in the first place.

\------------

It turns out that there’s a lot of fumbling and giggling and elbows in the stomach involved in trying to have sex with four people at the same time. Space tended to be an issue too. Astonishingly, five teenage boys can _not_ fit comfortably on a pulled out futon mattress, but in the end it doesn’t matter. They’re all so far gone with the need to just touch and feel and _be_ that the floor of the attic seems as good a place as any, though they may all regret that when they’re all laid up with wicked carpet burn later.

It’s all rather surreal honestly, the way it works out. In the span of the year or so that they’ve been physical, they’d never quite gone so far as to have actual sex, and if you asked Harry how he imagined it, well, it wouldn’t be like this. He definitely wouldn’t have figured that he’d have to yell at Liam _six times_ already that if he gets come in his hair he’s going to _kill him_ or that he’d be saying that because he’d be laid out with his head in Liam’s lap getting fucked while Liam’s dick is beating rhythmically on the back of his skull either but there you have it.

Louis probably wouldn’t have imagined that he’d get Niall’s foot in his face mid orgasm either, come to think of it.

Harry had, however, always hoped that it would be Zayn who was the first. He wanted so bad to have this experience with Zayn, to want and be wanted without having to feel guilty. To be able to wash the slate clean, so to speak. (Which, if Harry thinks about it, is really fucking funny because there was nothing at all clean about it.)

So maybe it didn’t turn out quite like anyone would’ve expected, but really, who the hell wakes up and thinks “oh, if I was going to have a fivesome, how would I want it to go down” anyway? It was messy and sloppy and Harry was pretty sure that his throat was raw more because he laughed so hard at how ridiculous it all was than anything else.

It was warm, and silly, and kisses came down on them all like a downpour, I love yous filling the room like a heat haze.

It was perfect really, well, except for the fact that Liam realized that the article of clothing he was cleaning himself off with afterward was in fact his Batman shirt and that it was now well and proper covered in jizz. That part Harry could have lived without.

 _Whatever_ , he’s _pretty sure_ that yeah, Liam will forgive him.

Maybe.

\-----------


End file.
